“Housing in the Margins” offers a theoretically informed and empirically detailed exploration of unruly housing practices and their governance at the periphery of Berlin. • An original empirical contribution to understanding housing precarity in the context of the German housing crisis • A novel approach to theorizing the nexus of informality and the state in ways that bridge analytical divides between debates about Northern and Southern states • An innovative account of urban development in Berlin that contributes to the limited discussions of urban informality in Euro-American cities • A theoretical understanding of the ways in which negotiations and transgressions are embedded in the making of urban order • A historically informed narrative of the development of allotment gardens in Berlin with a particular focus on housing practices at these sites