The David Graeber Institute Presents: The Housing Crisis: How the Market Broke the Home FREE TO ATTEND

The David Graeber Institute Presents: The Housing Crisis: How the Market Broke the Home

PLEASE NOTE NEW TIME. WE WILL BE LIVE AT 16:00 - 17:00

16:00 - 17:00 The David Graeber Institute Presents: The Housing Crisis: How the Market Broke the Home (VIRTUAL SESSION)

****FREE TO ATTEND****

Professor Steve Keen opens Scotland’s Economics Festival with a hard look at one of the most visible failures of modern capitalism — housing. Using a heterodox lens, Keen will explore how cities like Edinburgh have become trapped in a cycle where homes are treated as speculative assets rather than places to live. From the rise of “spare home” ownership and short-term festival rentals to the relentless escalation of property prices, this session will unpack how policy choices and market incentives have turned shelter into a source of profit and inequality. 

Drawing on Post-Keynesian and Minskyan insights, Keen will explain how government schemes designed to “help” homebuyers often end up fuelling the very price bubbles they claim to solve, while ever-rising private debt leaves households and the wider economy increasingly fragile. With Scotland’s capital as a case study, this session will demonstrate how heterodox economics cuts through the myths of market efficiency to reveal a system where the status quo not only fails to address the problem but actively exacerbates it.