The Housing Question

In the early-1870s, an ideological debate began to unfold in the German press on the shortage of affordable housing available to workers in major industrial areas. The rapid increase in industrial production necessitating an increase in industrial workers created a housing crisis. From June 1872 to February 1873, Fredrick Engels contributed a series of articles to the publication The Volksstaat (The People's State) titled "The Housing Question." Originally published as a booklet by the Co-Operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR and out of print for many years, INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS is proud to make this text available - as workers yet again face almost insurmountable obstacles to finding affordable housing. As Engels wrote in 1872, "What is meant today by housing shortage is the peculiar intensification of the bad housing conditions of the workers as the result of the sudden rush of population to the big towns; a