Chapter 4 explores how American policymakers expanded housing programs from the late 1960s to the early 1990s to address economic challenges such as rising inflation, unemployment, and deindustrialization. When high interest rates threatened mortgage lending and housing activity, policymakers created a government-backed mortgage-backed securities market with the quasi-public agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at its center. These actions aimed at restoring housing-based growth by attracting capital into housing and expanding mortgage lending at affordable rates. Moreover, policymakers expanded tax subsidies for homeownership, notably through the Tax Reform Act of 1986, and extended housing programs to stimulate economic activity in marginalized communities previously excluded from the benefits of housing-based growth. These programs contributed to the financialization of the American housing market and economy: They made the US mortgage market even more dependent on government support and tied the demand-led economy more closely to housing, as homeowners increasingly borrowed against their homes for consumer spending - further entrapping policymakers into supporting the housing sector as a growth strategy for decades to come.

Chapter 7 details the retrenchment of German housing programs during the country's structural economic crisis in the 2000s. Unlike American policymakers who expanded housing programs during the 2008-2009 crisis, German leaders cut housing programs to reduce fiscal deficits and reallocate funds to education, research, and technology. Following reunification, Germany experienced a brief housing boom in the 1990s, driven by demand-side housing stimulus programs, including a mortgage interest deduction, to spur growth in eastern Germany. However, this boom soon turned into a construction bust, leaving the country with one million vacant homes and reinforcing mass unemployment and capital misallocations in the economy. For German policymakers, housing programs became structural economic problems detrimental to the manufacturing-based, export-oriented economy. In 2006, Chancellor Angela Merkel's grand coalition sacrificed major social housing and homeownership programs, despite their popularity, in the name of reviving the German export-oriented economy.