Central banks influence money flows – have they got their current role right?

28 Mar 2024

Money makes the world go around and central banks supposedly keep it flowing. However, should they also ensure it flows in the right direction?

Central banks aim at promoting financial stability and could promote sustainable development that includes investment in affordable, inclusive, decarbonised housing. They could also create the perfect storm and promote borrowing, indebtedness, offering cheap money to big investors, creating real estate inflation, unaffordability, and as recent history remembers create housing booms and busts.

You are with ‘Making a house a home’, I am your host, Diana Yordanova and this is the second podcast episode of #Housing2030 – the initiative led by the European Federation of public, cooperative, and social housing providers, UNECE, and UN-Habitat. This new season is kindly supported by the Irish Research Council and the Irish Council of Social Housing.

We continue to dismantle financialisation and to search for tools that could tame it together with the lead writer of the #Housing2030 report, Dr Julie Lawson from RMIT University, and Professor Michelle Norris from University College Dublin who also wrote the chapter on better, sustainable finance that results in more affordable housing.

To discuss the role of central banks, we have met with seasoned experts, advocates, decision-makers literally from all around the world – Brussels, London, Strasbourg, Groningen, Auckland, Ottawa, and Hong Kong.

Professor Laurence Murphy, Human Geography at the University of Auckland, New Zealand

Professor Dirk Bezemer, Finance, monetary economics, growth and development at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands

Alicia Garcia Herrero, Chief economist for Asia Pacific and Bruegel Institute, formerly European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund

Dr Josh Ryan-Collins, a Senior Research Fellow in Economics and Finance at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose in London

Stefan Zeugner, macroeconomist expert, Directorate‑General of the European Commission for Economic and Financial Affairs

Kim van Sparrentak, Member of the European Parliament, the Greens (Netherlands)

Leilani Farha, Founder of ‘The Shift’ and former UN Rapporteur on the Right to Housing

As usual, we invite you to keep in touch with us at communications@housingeurope.eu or via the #Housing2030 hashtag. Make sure to come back to our channel in a few weeks from now when we will take a deep dive into the world of mortgage market regulation and how we can make it better.