This paper analyzes social sustainability in the context of urban housing through the lens of institutional capital. It examines how civil society housing actors co-construct bottom-linked governance arrangements by interacting endogenously with peers and exogenously with institutional actors, such as public housing agencies and elected officials, in order to steer, as housing alliances, socially sustainable residential developments. The paper thus offers an answer to the following two research questions: (1) What are internal governance features that characterize such civil society housing alliances? (2) What are their strategies of interaction with institutional actors in order to promote social sustainability and thus counter exclusionary patterns in urban housing systems? Empirical evidences are drawn from two civil society housing alliances in Austria, ‘BAWO’ (a national alliance of homelessness NGOs) and the ‘Initiative Collaborative Building & Living’. During three research stays in Vienna between 2014 and 2020, data was collected through semi-structured interviews and focus groups with leaders and members of housing alliances, interviews with key institutional stakeholders and web research. By reflecting on the institutional and relational character of the two housing alliances and digging out their potential and limitations in promoting different elements of social sustainability, our paper concludes that social sustainability in housing systems can be realized when it is set as a societal ambition sufficiently politicized by major parties involved in housing systems (housing alliances, governmental authorities of all ideological backgrounds, large non-profit housing developers) that collectively guarantee housing affordability and socio-spatial equity for all.

This paper examines how different housing actors (social resilience cells and their partners, institutional structures, neighbourhood communities) in post-Katrina New Orleans have activated their social capital into institutional capital. It uses a critical up-to-date synthesis of social capital enriched by governance theories to investigate how new governance hybridities can be shaped in order to guide the city’s housing redevelopment. Furthermore, the paper seeks to evaluate the potential these governance hybridities have in redeveloping the city toward an egalitarian post-disaster city. By this is meant a city in which all affected neighbourhoods are recognized for their unique housing and social needs as well as for their distinct sociodemographic and physical characteristics, and where different social resilience cells are responsive to the needs of specific communities. The paper examines the unique rebuilding footprint and governance formation potential of eight social resilience cells in New Orleans. The results show that governance-improving fermentations were mostly brought to life by pro-equity and pro-comaterializing social resilience cells and their alliances at the local level during the late recovery years. Nonetheless, the new forms of governance are dominated by the pro-profit political economy paradigm. As such, the potential of the improved governance hybridities in facilitating egalitarian socio-spatial effects has remained moderate.

This paper examines the realism of the resilience ambition and process of the U.S. housing system, shedding light on its heterogeneity as well as the financialization currently acting as the driving force in real estate production. The resilience ambition leading to enhanced justice and egalitarianism is understood as the provision and maintenance of post-disaster housing for all within an institutionally diverse landscape of housing policy makers and implementers. Particular emphasis is given to the post-Katrina institutional transformations resulting from multifarious interactions between multilevel institutional structures and a diverse landscape of low-income housing policy implementers – referred as social resilience cells (SRCs) in this paper. The nature and level of these transformations determine the degree to which resilience in its heterogeneous form has been incubated in New Orleans. The paper concludes with a discussion on the macro conditions and bottom-linked governance structures under which all SRCs could be better bolstered in a post-financialization, radicalised neowelfare U.S., and which in turn create possibilities for materialising the resilience ambition.

Making use of theories of discourse and social innovation, this paper analyses the resilience of post-Katrina housing reconstruction trajectories in New Orleans. It defines and connects the concepts of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic social resilience cells (SRC), institutional structures and housing reconstruction trajectories as the pillars of the housing systems. SRC are the key agents in these systems and have been the main architects of the multidirectional housing recovery trajectory in New Orleans. Their discursive and material practices, and the way they interact with institutional structures are studied for two periods in the post-Katrina recovery process. Based on the main features of their practices and institutional affinities SRC can be divided into three types: hegemonic pro-growth and counter-hegemonic pro-equity and pro-comaterializing SRC. The evidence on the multidirectionality of housing reconstruction trajectories has challenged at least three hegemonic discursive myths about the post-Katrina recovery process: that reconstruction should be planned top-down; without state involvement; and without city-wide political leadership. The paper concludes that socially optimal recovery outcomes can be achieved when institutional structures build alliances with diverse types of SRC and orchestrate resilience trajectories on the basis of equity of treatment.

Community Land Trusts (CLTs) have emerged as alternative housing models mainly taken up by civil society organizations aiming to de-commodify land and ensure long-term affordable housing, while fostering participatory democratic governance and (re)claiming the right to homeownership. Drawing on empirical evidence from the CLT in Leuven (Belgium) and research conducted between November 2022 and February 2025, this study examines state-led CLTs and their potential in providing affordable housing and democratizing housing systems. The leading role of local authorities serves as a catalyst facilitating access to land and resources while setting up democratic and collaborative governance processes towards the creation of housing commons. However, their involvement introduces market mechanisms that undermine long-term affordability. This research mobilizes the literature on commons and commoning, housing affordability debates and governance theories to explore the paradox of state-led CLTs: Can they democratize housing governance, or does state involvement inevitably reinforce the market mechanisms they seek to counteract? The paper argues that states can initiate commons without fully co-opting them, provided governance is polycentric and reflexive. The contribution of state-led housing commons lies not in radical rupture but in incremental decommodification and emergent commoning, showing how commons can evolve within capitalist states.