This article addresses Brecht’s engagement with the housing question and
sets it in relation to the descriptive tradition of naturalism. By 1900, mis-
erable housing conditions had become a central theme of social reform
movements. Descriptions of such conditions were to be found in naturalis-
tic works of literature as well as in bureaucratic surveys. Indeed, the hous-
ing question as an epistemic object demonstrated the productivity of such
literary-bureaucratic alliances. Brecht’s exploration of the housing ques-
tion was at odds with this tradition. In works from the late 1920s, notably
Saint Joan of the Stockyards and The Bread Store, housing misery is no
longer the object of epistemic inquiries but a functional topos that demon-
strates conflicting capitalist relations. The depiction of housing misery in
The Bread Shop is no longer shocking and horrifying, but banal. Reformist
institutions invested in the description of housing misery are exposed by
Brecht as its beneficiaries.