Managing affordable homeownership in urban China: grassroots responses to state-led governance reforms

Affordable homeownership schemes aim to mitigate housing inequalities and broaden access to homeownership among low-to-middle-income households. In urban China, affordable homeownership governance followed a path-dependent market logic institutionalised since the late 1990s, frequently generating dysfunctions and conflicts. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed these governance failures and necessitated renewed state intervention, constituting a critical juncture. Building on a case study of Xinjia Yuan, a state-led affordable homeownership scheme in Shanghai, this article examines how governance practices evolved and adapted to China’s broader governance transformations before, during, and after the pandemic. The study draws on historical institutionalism to analyse how grassroots actors developed informal practices amid the path dependence of state entrepreneurialism and the critical juncture of state reassertion. The findings reveal how informal practices among grassroots actors gained legitimacy over time. While direct state intervention sustained market-oriented governance frameworks, the pandemic outbreak reasserted grassroots party-state authority, further facilitating the state-led mobilisation of active residents to address market limitations in the post-pandemic era. This article offers critical insights into governance transitions in affordable housing management by highlighting the grassroots state’s role as an essential safety net and extending the analytical lens to grassroots adaptive practices.