Introducing the Housing Squeeze zine

Jessie Spears, David Madden and Housing Squeeze workshop participants

Published in Issue 7.1 // Updates

Keywords: Housing, domesticity, tiny housing, zines, arts-based research

Abstract:

In cities across the globe, housing is being squeezed as families and individuals are relegated to increasingly smaller domestic spaces. The housing squeeze is far from new, but a variety of shrinking pressures have deepened in the wake of the 2008 global financial crash. In May 2025 a group of fifteen scholars researching shrinking domesticity in diverse contexts—from street shelters in India to micro-apartments in Hong Kong—came together to produce a zine called The Housing Squeeze. Merging data, interviews, maps, collage, and multilingual reflections, this zine proposes radical housing futures inspired by decolonial, grassroots, and transnational insights. This creative academic collaboration contributes to the broader genre of radical housing zines, which has roots in underrepresented communities and countercultural movements.

doi.org/10.54825/NIPT1943

Jessie Speer is a geographer at the London School of Economics and a collage artist devoted to bridging the divide between art and the social sciences (https://jessiespeer.tumblr.com). Her current book project—Bulldozed: Homeless in America—examines the demolition of homeless encampments in the United States as part of a larger attack on urban informality.

David Madden is a sociologist and housing researcher at the London School of Economics. He is co-author, with Peter Marcuse, of In Defense of Housing. He is currently working on a book about the politics of housing tenure.

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Topics: artcollaborationcommunity organizingglobal housing crisishousing futures