The ancient Greeks and Romans grappled with housing crises, too

In many developed countries, the price of goods has increased so high that the dream of home ownership has faded for many people. Often, rental is not a much better option, with an impact of affordable properties.

This is one of the great problems of our time. But is this a specifically modern problem? Like today, people of Antiquity dreamed of having property. Buying a house was a source of joy.

But they also had to face surprisingly similar difficulties at different times during the different centuries.

A housing crisis is nothing new

In 164 BCE, King Ptolemy of Egypt entered exile and fled to Italy. Disguised as a commoner and accompanied by three slaves, he went to Rome. There, Ptolemy looked for his friend, Demetrius.

When he found it, he was shocked. This friend, who was quite rich in Egypt, lived in poor conditions.

One of the reasons for this, as we say the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (around 80-20 BCE), was that the rental properties of Rome had become so expensive: “Because the rents in Rome were so high, Demetrius lived in a small and quite Shabby Garret.”

Even if Demetrius was easy, Rome was so expensive, he could not find a decent and affordable rental property.

Housing attacks have had serious social consequences

In the 130s BCE, Rome was in a disastrous situation. Due to the greed of the rich landowners, poor people were increasingly unable to afford rents or purchasing goods.

As the Greek Plutarch writer says (c. 46-119 CE): “The rich began to offer larger rents and chased the poor.”

To try to solve this problem, Roman politicians have decided to create a law “prohibiting detention by a person of more than five hundred acres in the field”.

However, this law has not succeeded. The rich have found ways to escape it by obtaining men in the middle to buy a property for them.

This failure had serious social consequences. As Plutarch explains: “The poor, who had been ejected from their land, were no longer impatient of military service and neglected children’s farming.”

As people could no longer afford to live in their own country, many estimated that they had no more participation in the future. They have lost their desire to fight for the country or increase future generations.

Try to solve the problem

Over the centuries, former leaders have also tried to tackle the non-affair of housing in different ways.

A proposal was that the State would offer free land, on which the candidates could apply to build houses.

Like the Athenian Xenophon writer (around 430–350 BC), “if the state authorized the approved candidates to erect houses on [vacant sites within the city] And granted them free property, I think we should find a larger and better class of people wishing to live in Athens. “”

What if there were no vacant land available for people without access to housing? Servius Tullius, king of Rome in the 6th century BC, offers an example of another possible (and perhaps familiar) solution – urban sprawl.

According to the historian Dionysius de Halicarnassus (writing in the 1st century BCE), Servius widened the size of the city and made new free land to rely.

This would house Romans who “had no accommodation”. This solution seems to have worked and widely extended the size of the city.

Location, location

Ancient times people also understood that the location was everything. They knew that if they moved from a big city in a rural area, the property would be more affordable.

For example, the novel poet Juvenal (around 55–127 CE) observed that for the same amount that you would pay in the annual rent in Rome: “An excellent house in Sora or Fabrateria or Fruusino can be bought purely and simple […] Here you will have a small garden […] Live in love with your hoe as a supervisor in your vegetable garden […]. “”

Of course, the difficulty was to find an income far from the city. For most people, it was not possible.

Refinancing and debt

If people had no money but had a property without current mortgage, they could refinance their property to get a loan. As a former anonymous commentator wrote on the custom of the Athenians: “The people who were in debt to debt their houses and would have opinions which were written to them, so it would be known that they were indebted.”

The comic poet with long lifespan Alexis (c. 375-275 BCE), joked on this practice. A character in his play, The Greek Girl, quips to have “mortgaged all our property” to buy dear fish for dinner.

Lessons from the past

Roman politician Tiberius Gracchus (c. 169-133 BCE) offered a powerful piece of rhetoric on the housing crisis of his time. Referring to displaced citizens, he said that:

“The wild beasts that wander on Italy each have a cave or a hideout to hide; but the men who fight and die for Italy enjoy common air and light, indeed, but nothing else. Without coupout and homeless that they wander with their women and their children […] They do not have a single clod of earth belongs to him. “”

Today, we could live in a very different world, but looking towards history shows us that access to housing and social cohesion has long been linked.

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