Between Private Property and the Commons: Public Funding and Housing Retrofits in Greece

Abstract

This thesis investigates the intersection of housing, property, and climate governance by analysing public funding for energy retrofitting not as a neutral technical intervention, but as a political and institutional process that enhances property relations and produces differentiated political subjectivities. Situated within the EU’s 2021–2027 budgetary cycle and the policy horizon of the European Green Deal and Renovation Wave, the research asks: how do property regimes mediate the implementation of climate funding in housing, and what kinds of social relations and political capacities do these interventions produce? Empirically, the thesis centers on (1) Exoikonomo, Greece’s flagship owner-led energy retrofit programme embedded in the Recovery and Resilience Facility; as its primary case study, examining its design, implementation mechanisms, and distributional effects within the framework of the Recovery and Resilience Facility. To contextualise and critically assess the specificity of Exoikonomo’s owner-centred logic, the analysis is complemented by two comparative cases drawn from the same budgetary period:(2) Rock the Block, a pilot project under the European Urban Initiative - Innovation Action requiring coordination among private owners within a common building for energy retrofitting; and (3) Housing Thessaloniki, a municipal public housing retrofit programme targeting low-income households. While all three cases are aligned with EU climate objectives and originate from the same budgetary period, they are implemented through distinct funding instruments and property regimes, resulting in markedly different institutional arrangements. The findings indicate that climate adaptation funding for housing systematically prioritises owner-occupied property and asset upgrading, while marginalising non-market housing forms and collective approaches. As a result, public climate funds are frequently converted into private property value, with limited mechanisms to address distributional impacts, social vulnerability, or long-term affordability. At the same time, the comparative analysis shows that differences in implementation, particularly in decision-making structures and coordination requirements, produce distinct social relations and political subjectivities, ranging from individualised and responsibilised property owners to administrated residents and, in limited cases, emergent collective actors. By shifting the focus from funding allocation to implementation as institution-building, the thesis argues that the political significance of public retrofit funding lies not only in who and under what conditions financial support is received, but in the social relations and forms of collective agency it institutes, thereby shaping the democratic possibilities of climate adaptation in the housing sector. The thesis contributes to debates on housing justice, climate justice, and post-growth by demonstrating that the key political question of green housing finance concerns not only emissions reduction or expenditure efficiency, but who captures the long-term value of the green transition and what kinds of institutions are built around it.