The Buyer’s Price Programme: State-Led-Neoliberalism and Legitimating a New Mode of Housing in Israel

This article examines legitimation issues in affordable housing programmes developed after the 2008 GFC, reflecting the restructuring of housing markets under neoliberal regimes. It highlights the press as a key arena in shaping contemporary struggles. We focus on the Israeli Buyer's Price programme (2015–2018) and analyze 2,368 news items from major newspapers to show how legitimacy was constructed and contested. The findings reveal that the Israeli press acted as a constitutive arena, linking government bodies, real-estate actors, and civil society, and providing a platform for stakeholders to shape public perception. Legitimacy struggles were structured along four discursive axes: performance, ideology, prediction, and crisis, that actors employed to both justify and reject the programme. The escalation of delegitimization over time signals a backlash: opposition framing new housing programs as threats to established power structures. We conclude by underscoring the importance of legitimacy struggles in ongoing housing transformations.