Low income home ownership and housing policy

Public Housing and Private Property 1970–1984. by Stephanie Cooper. Aldershot: Gower. 1985. pp. 178. £18.50.

Low Cost Home Ownership. edited by Philip Booth and Tony Crook. Aldershot: Gower. 1985. pp. 264. £18.50.

Home Ownership in the Inner City: Salvation or Despair? by Valerie Karn, Jim Kemeny and Peter Williams. Aldershot: Gower. 1985. pp. 162. £16.50.     

Fiscal policy,taxation incentives and inner‐city housing development

This paper considers the risk and uncertainty attached to inner‐city environments and analyses the use of taxation incentives as a policy instrument in generating demand‐led residential development in such localities. Initially an international perspective is outlined; however, particular attention is focused on Dublin, Ireland, where taxation breaks specifically orientated at both owner and occupiers and investors have been a prime influence in stimulating private sector residential development on a major scale within the central core of the city. The case is presented for the imaginative use of tax incentives in achieving effective urban regeneration. Whilst it is recognised that housing policy and mechanisms cannot simply be replicated from one situation to another, there is need for policy‐makers, especially in Britain, to consider more innovative approaches to inner city housing renewal by integrating macro‐economic, fiscal and housing policy objectives.     

Promoting home ownership in a social‐rented city: policies,practices and pitfalls

Amsterdam's housing market is dominated by the social‐rented sector. It comprises 56 per cent of the total housing stock, while home ownership comprises only 19 per cent, lower than anywhere else in the Netherlands, and among the lowest in the world. Central government policy is currently seeking to increase the share of home ownership in the Netherlands from 53 per cent (2001) to 65 per cent in 2010. This paper will summarise recent national and local (Amsterdam) housing policy developments, focusing on the recent practice of selling social housing in Amsterdam. Unlike the Right to Buy scheme in Britain, the Netherlands employs an ‘offer to buy’ strategy. Sales, however, have been disappointing so far. Two factors were found to be crucial in this regard: (1) the sluggish change in ‘policy mentality’ and bureaucracy and (2) the high prices in the home ownership market. By way of conclusion, the paper reflects on the desirability of shifting the tenure structure from tenancy to ownership and on the risks that an (over‐) emphasis on home ownership may bring.     

A wasting resource: public housing and drug use in inner‐city Melbourne

Public housing is one of few sources of low‐income rental housing in inner‐city Melbourne, Australia. Most of this housing is easily identifiable high‐rise estates. Some of these estates have become established centres of heroin dealing and drug use. This has had significant consequences: applicants reject offers of housing on the estates; tenants apply for transfers; and housing officers face workplace occupational health and safety issues. In sum, the presence of the drug trade is undermining the provision of affordable, well‐located public housing. This paper contributes to discussions that seek to restore the value of this common resource. It does so by drawing on qualitative interviews and focus groups conducted with heroin users who live in and/or use public housing. The experience of these individuals gives insight into the current relationship between the illicit drug trade and public housing, as well as some understanding of the resilience of the illicit drug trade. The paper looks at measures that have been implemented to address this problem, before questioning whether there is room for an innovative, regulatory response to illicit drug use.     

公众参与城市规划与公平正义

改革开放以来,随着我国城市化的快速发展,城市规划的价值取向也日渐成为人们关注的内容.城市规划作为政府公共政策的一部分,其核心价值取向就是社会资源配置的公正与公平.当前,我国城市规划存在的合法性危机,本质上是公共利益缺失和公正与公平难于实现的危机.化解危机的根本出路在于通过公众的参与,保障公共利益和公平正义的实现.     

Geographic and dynamic heterogeneity of home ownership

This paper analyses the determination of the demand for home ownership. The determinants include prices and short- and medium-term price changes, public regulation (regulation of house rent, housing subsidies, taxation), competition from alternative residence forms (measured by supply of subsidised housing), social composition of population (age, social benefit recipients, household composition, civil status, education, nationality), economic ability (income), and congestion (measured by population density and degree of urbanisation). The study applies Danish aggregate data for 270 Danish municipalities, available annually for the period 1999–2004. The effects of determinants on home ownership rates are allowed to be heterogeneous by years and municipalities using temporally and geographically expanded coefficients. Considerable parametric heterogeneity over time as well as across municipalities is found, even when residual dynamic heterogeneity and interdependency as well as residual spatial spillover is controlled for.

Housing ownership and housing wealth: new evidence in transitional China

Ever since housing was transformed from the most important welfare benefit to the most valuable form of private property through radical housing reform in 1998, housing allocation mechanisms in China have been characterized by the coexistence of market logic and socialist legacy. Thus, the Chinese housing system exhibits a transitional nature as the country moves away from a socialist housing system towards a privatized housing system. Using the 2011 Chinese Household Finance Survey, we not only examine these changes in private ownership of housing, but also give an updated evaluation of the privatization process with new empirical evidence. We develop a conceptual framework and an empirical analysis to shed light on distinct housing inequality patterns in transitional urban China. Our results show that both socioeconomic characteristics and socialist institutions contribute to housing inequality, but they follow different paths in the reform and have different impacts on housing inequality.     

The growth of mass home ownership in Taiwan

With the increasing growth of home ownership inEuropean countries, the issue ofrecommodification of housing is being widelydiscussed. The significant amount ofinternational research focused on housing hasdrawn attention to the changing structure ofthe housing stock and the consequences of suchchange. Research is gradually shifting from apolicy-centred perspective focusing on socialhousing to a wider view of how the housingmarket operates. In line with this trend inhousing research, this paper seeks to explainthe development of housing systems in Taiwanand to show how the high percentage of homeownership is related to the different routes bywhich new homeowners gain access to the sector.With the growing influence of market-basedhousing provision, home ownership depends moreon the deepening involvement of the financialsystem, especially at the lower end of themarket. Along with the changes in the widersocial context – such as the downturn of thehousing market, the wider economic recession,the rising rate of unemployment – the housingsystem that is dominated by mortgaged homeownership is in crisis.     

The limits of housing policy: Home ownership in Australia

This paper provides an overview of the history of owner occupation rates and policies in Australia, starting from the first Commonwealth census in 1911 and continuing to the most recent in 1991, with particular emphasis on the recent past. The ownership rate grew by only a few percentage points between the 1911 and 1947 censuses, but then increased rapidly from 53 per cent in 1947 to 70 per cent in 1961. However, in spite of extensive promotion of home ownership by the Commonwealth and state governments, ownership rates in Australia have been more or less stable ever since. In a re‐interpretation of Australia's experience with owner occupation, we argue that economic and demographic circumstances are much more important than previous policy‐oriented accounts have allowed.     

Deindustrializatjon,redundant workers and housing in the city of tampere 1

The article presents theories and empirical findings on social relations in urban neighbourhoods. It briefly puts the tradition of neighbourhood studies into the history of mainstream sociology, especially concerning the question of community. The overview of studies of locally based social relations is organized in terms of the hypotheses of urban communities as being lost, saved or liberated. The empirical material presented strongly favours the last of these. The article also deals with the processes of network‐formation and discusses the importance of weak ties in the neighbourhood.     

British home owners and housing change in rural France

Drawing on a survey of 406 home owners in France, expansion in British property ownership is shown to have increased the rural housing stock and to have improved rural housing quality. In all, 30 per cent of British home owners in France have added at least one dwelling to the housing stock, mostly by restoring a derelict property or bringing an unwanted farm building into residential use. Amongst other property owners, 55 per cent have undertaken significant renovations (extensions, major structural work, etc.), so more than two‐thirds of all British buyers have helped raise the quality of the rural housing stock. This has had little effect on house prices, partly because there is little French demand for the properties Britons buy. Given that British buyers are also reluctant to acquire homes from other Britons, a semi‐autonomous housing market is being created in which resales are difficult. This tendency is weakening slightly now, but British owners who wish to sell continue to rely on France being used as an extension of ‘British’ rural housing markets, wherein they can acquire a rural ‘dream’ home that is not only unaffordable but also unattainable in Britain.     

厦门市保障性住房政策与住房规划历程综述

通过阅读相关的文献资料,对厦门市20多年的保障性住房政策及建设情况进行了分析总结,并叙述了保障性住房规划历程,同时积累了相关经验,对城市规划和社会保障性住房的建设具有重要意义。     

以名仕嘉苑小区规划为例谈旧城区改造设计

分析了旧城区改造案例名仕嘉苑小区的规划设计及规划原则,得出了旧城区改造应利用旧城区区位优势为回迁、返迁人群创造良好的居住环境,体现传统与现代生活模式,改进旧城区面貌等设计原则,从而改善城区居住环境。     

The development and politics of tenant participation in British council housing

Since the late 1960s traditions of paternalistic management in British council housing have been challenged by calls for greater tenant involvement Such calls came first from the tenants’ movement, but during the 1970s and 1980s they have been echoed in different ways by central government. The forms, aims, advocates and development of tenant participation have varied, so that events are not well explained by functionalist theories of the state. While there have been significant economic influences, political and cultural factors (particularly the ideology of consumer expectations) have been very important in putting tenant participation on the agenda of both the tenants’ movement and the state.