Actors in the Geographies of Class in Housing

We’ve reached a point where adult life revolves around a 30-year mortgage. As a society, we no longer challenge this financial and social reality; instead, we’ve come to accept it as an almost natural given. There is nothing natural about this. There are many economic, political, and social forces that have brought us to this point. This is not a situation unique to Romanian cities. Many of the world’s large urban centers find themselves in this situation. The European Commission refers to our current housing situation as a social crisis ( State of the European Union address, December 2025, by President Ursula von der Leyen, President of the^{European Commission¹}).

What does this housing crisis look like for Bucharest? A city where the public housing agenda has been almost completely abandoned, where the public administration’s focus is on beautification projects—without the slightest consideration for the potential gentri