The role of housing inheritance in selected owner occupied societies (Britain,New Zealand,Canada)

The paper examines the debate regarding housing inheritance and its impact upon wealth transfers within selected owner occupier societies (Britain, New Zealand and Canada). The examination of current research data show how tenure changes and house price movements in the 1970s and 1980s have resulted in greater accumulation of wealth within owner occupied housing. This increase in wealth raises the question of the disbursement of such wealth on death through bequeathing, and the impact this has upon the recipients social position and lifestyle. Here, the data from the selected societies show that most transfers are within the immediate family and occur in mid‐life when the recipients are already established in their own housing, thus minimising the impact on their lives and social positions. The second part of the paper presents data on the nature of gifts and inheritances within Canada drawn from the 1986 Housing Expenditure Survey. These data show that the amounts of money transferred vary by age, gender, family composition, income, occupation and tenure. In addition, regional differences across Canada were found. The paper argues for the need for further more qualitative based research to assess the full impact that such transfers play upon family relationships, social class position and lifestyles.     

Financial gains from owner occupation: The New Zealand case 1970–88

This paper engages with the debate concerning the financial gains from home ownership. The first section focuses on the empirical side of the debate and is primarily a conceptual analysis. It defines three measures of gain, explores their utility and limitations and demonstrates their appropriateness for different analytical purposes. Section 2 is concerned partly with developing a wider comparative perspective to the debate by calculating the extent of financial gain for New Zealand urban home owners since 1970. Next the paper looks at the effect of spatial location of accumulation potential. In section 3 connections are made between the processes at work in the labour and housing markets: attempts are made to link the empirical data on financial gains from housing to labour market restructuring. Finally comments are made on some implications of the empirical findings for the wider debate.     

The production of homelessness: From individual failure to system inadequacies

The paper is concerned with an exploration of images, definitions and debates about the nature of homelessness in capitalist societies, its causes and consequences. The paper begins by considering images of homelessness and whether homelessness is a private individual trouble or a public issue and the result of inadequacies not of individuals but of the housing system. The paper then reviews the debate over definitions of homelessness examining material from New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom. The debate over definition demonstrates the necessity to reorganise research and analysis around a continuum of housing needs to place homelessness within a broader framework and prevent the marginalisation of the homeless both within society and within housing research. Further research should also examine the manner in which the homeless as a social group have been managed and therefore controlled. The paper then moves to a discussion of the characteristics and incidence of homelessness within the New Zealand population and shows how this group has emerged as a consequence of failures within the production, allocation and consumption of housing rather than as a result of individual inadequacies.     

Housing and the New Welfare State: Wobbly Pillar or Cornerstone?

This paper is concerned with the question of how to depict the housing-welfare state relationship, with special reference to the present period. It begins with a discussion of how housing can be seen as both the wobbly pillar under the welfare state and a cornerstone. The paper then examines two different perspectives, variously giving explanatory weight to economic and cultural factors. The first, derived from the work of Michael Harloe, provides an explanation of the tendency of social housing to move towards a residual role, but has nothing to say about the growing significance of housing markets and housing wealth in relation to the contemporary welfare state. The second, originated by Jim Kemeny, is based on international correlations of homeownership rates and levels of welfare state expenditure. It is argued that this approach has limited, and diminishing, relevance in the context of the early 21st century. The paper suggests that in the present period housing, especially the housing wealth of owner occupiers, provides governments with the opportunity to pursue welfare restructuring. This idea is explored by reference to evidence from Great Britain, a country with a high level of homeownership and an active programme of public service reform.     

Meanings of home for older home owners

The meaning of home has been the subject of much recent debate. The paper explores this debate and uses empirical data from New Zealand to demonstrate that the meaning of home reflects specific sets of historical and social circumstances and is multi‐dimensional. Key features include home as a cultural value, the investment potential of home and the impacts of gender on the meanings attached to home and home life. The paper explores the meanings of home amongst a group of older New Zealanders interviewed towards the end of 1993 and in early 1994, a time of considerable upheaval within state policy with respect to the elderly. For this group ‘home’ was synonymous with home ownership and reflected deeply held concerns with respect to security, family and continuity. These same concerns it is argued gave rise to the specific pattern of housing tenure, predominantly owner occupation, that developed within New Zealand. Out of these concerns for security and family continuity comes a focus upon bequeathing amongst the older home owners as they consider the passing on of their accumulated assets and other markers of family to the next generation. Changing patterns of family form and the growth of a more individualistic culture, as a result of social and economic restructuring, are expected to profoundly modify the meanings of home held by New Zealanders and lead to increasingly marked intergenerational differences in both the meanings attached to ‘home’ and the importance of inheritance.     

Towards the More Effective Use of Housing Finance and Subsidy

The UK provides an important case study of both the potential for restructuring traditional housing finance systems and the outcome of such restructuring. During the period 1975–2000 the UK government undertook a piece-by-piece restructuring of housing finance. The major objectives of this restructuring included bringing public expenditure under control, ensuring that a high proportion of housing costs were paid by the direct beneficiaries and targeting available subsidy more directly on those in housing need. This agenda was supported by more general policies of liberalisation and privatisation, and particularly by the growth in asset values during the 1970s and 1980s and by macro-economic stabilisation during the 1990s. Based on the desktop analysis undertaken for the Evaluation of English Housing Policy Review this paper takes four specific policies and clarifies how political priorities and the economic environment came together to make policy change possible. It then evaluates the outcomes of these policies both in terms of their immediate goals and the more general objectives of housing policy. The incremental approach favoured by the government appears to have been successful in its own terms, but the result is far from a coherent and sustainable housing finance policy. The conclusions stress more general lessons some of which have implications for effective restructuring in other countries.     

The Supply-Side Modernisation of Social Housing in England: Analysing Mechanics,Trends and Consequences

The past 30 years have seen England's housing associations (HAs) transformed from marginal players in the wider housing market to a point where, in 2008, they overtook local authorities as majority social housing providers. This paper reviews theoretical perspectives on the evolution of the UK social housing and the rise of HAs since the 1970s, with a particular focus on the ‘modernisation’ thesis advanced by Malpass & Victory (2010). Against this backdrop, we analyse the sector's recent reconfiguration, integrating the impacts of housing stock transfers and HA mergers. Our analysis focuses on the consequences of sector restructuring in terms of organisational homogenisation and, at least as perceived, the growing dominance of giant landlords. Finally, within the context of the Coalition Government's localism rhetoric, we discuss the accountability implications of restructuring activity and the light our analysis sheds on theoretical understandings of social housing change processes.     

The downside of home ownership: Housing change and mortgage arrears in the republic of Ireland

Recent debates concerning the existence of social divisions within home ownership hold implications for analyses of housing policy. This is especially true in situations where housing policy has been driven by an overt support for home ownership. In particular, the consequences of expanding home ownership among low‐income groups needs to be examined. This paper argues that an appropriate framework for such an investigation requires a three tiered approach encompassing housing policy, institutional behaviour and the housing experiences of households. Adopting a ‘structures of housing provision’ approach (Ball, 1983; Ball & Harloe, 1992), this paper examines the consequences of extending home ownership in the Republic of Ireland over the period 1970–90. Moving from an overview of housing policy and institutional activity in housing finance, the paper addresses the issue of mortgage arrears through an analysis of building society management practice and household experiences.     

Planning for play: seventy years of ineffective public policy? The example of Glasgow,Scotland

This paper looks at the planning and provision of outdoor play spaces for children over a seventy-year period since the Second World War. Using Glasgow as a case study, the paper examines whether and how research on families and children living in flats has been used to inform national and local planning policies in this area, and in turn how well policy is converted into practice and provision on the ground. The paper considers these issues in four time periods: the period of post-war reconstruction from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, when large amounts of social housing was built; the period of decline and residualization of social housing in the 1970s and 1980s; the 1990s and 2000s when several attempts were made to regenerate social housing estates; and the last five years, during which time the Scottish Government has developed a number of policies concerning children’s health and physical activity. Planning policy in Glasgow appears to have been ineffective across several decades. Issues such as a weak link between research and policy recommendations, unresolved tensions between a number of policy options, and a lack of political priority afforded to the needs to children are identified as contributory factors.     

Mortgage Market Deregulation and its Consequences

One of the key aims of housing policy has been to extend homeownership. This paper examines the role that mortgage market deregulation has played in extending access to homeownership. It also examines its social and economic impacts. Deregulation is characterised as an unfolding process, rather than an explicit policy with identifiable objectives. It is identified as involving the ending of direct controls over building society lending, the opening up of the mortgage market to competition as a consequence of the abolition of exchange controls and the ‘corset’, the creation of a level playing field between banks and building societies, and a shift towards regulatory convergence between banks and building societies. Institutional, social and economic consequences of deregulation are identified. Deregulation led to a much more competitive mortgage market, facilitated the shift of the bulk of mortgages from the mutual to banking sectors and contributed towards the polarisation of the industry between specialist providers of savings and mortgage products and diversified financial institutions. Deregulation widened access to homeownership by widening access to housing finance, but also introduced more risk into the system. However, the risk-choice trade-off has been tilted in the direction of risk by the inefficiency of the supply-side. This has caused many of the benefits of deregulation to be lost in higher house prices. Deregulation also altered the relationship between the housing sector and the economy by making housing wealth more liquid, and this has had important implications for economic management. The pricing out of many people from owner occupation and the importance attached to spreading housing wealth are driving the design of current policies designed to increase homeownership further still.     

Housing Market Renewal in Liverpool: Locating the Gentrification Debate in History,Context and Evidence

This paper places the Housing Market Renewal programme in Liverpool in its historical context, highlighting a mismatch between the supply and demand for housing which has existed for four decades. This disequilibrium produced an environment where successive waves of neighbourhood abandonment occurred from the late 1970s despite significant public policy interventions. The implementation of the Housing Market Renewal programme has stimulated a debate about the extent to which the public sector interventions are leading to the gentrification of poor neighbourhoods. The paper finds that there is no evidence of gentrification in older neighbourhoods, however, inflows of capital rather than middle-class residents have altered the physical development of the city to an extent that the housing choices of all income groups have been affected. The paper concludes that critical gentrification research should take account of historical development and wider housing market change to remain relevant to the debate about the changing social and economic structure of cities.     

Housing Pathways of Camping Ground Residents in New Zealand

A housing pathways approach captures the dynamics of housing: people's experiences of movement between dwellings and location, their decision making and preferences over time and space (Clapham, 2002). This paper presents the narratives of camping ground residents and community key informants, through discussing the experiences of residents in, through and out of camping grounds in New Zealand. The movement in and out of camping grounds is not a discrete event, but can be seen as affecting and affected by previous and future moves. This paper has a particular focus on the forced nature of many residents' pathways. The narratives highlight social, economic and political factors affecting residents' access to housing, and show the social exclusion experienced by many residents. The experiences of camping ground residents are placed within the context of the broad housing sector, which draws attention to the complexity of housing pathways.     

Spatial and Social Divisions within British Cities: Beyond Residualisation

The literature on changing residential patterns in cities attributes different degrees of importance to economic restructuring and to changes in housing. In Britain, where a significant share of housing provision is not provided through the market, the references to socio-tenurial polarisation and the residualisation of council housing have emphasised the importance of housing tenure. The nature of housing restructuring has affected both the pace and pattern of urban change. At the end of the 1990s problems associated with deprived neighbourhoods are arousing policy attention and this has given further prominence to housing tenure differences and residualisation. This paper reviews evidence which suggests that a wider range of housing related factors are now influencing changing patterns in British cities. These especially relate to divisions within home ownership and to differences related to ethnicity and cohort. The evidence presented cautions against placing tenure at the centre of analysis of change and policy responses or equating neighbourhoods of social rented housing with area deprivation.     

Hoping for more: redeveloping U.S. public housing without marginalizing low-income residents?

Urban restructuring policies have uprooted residents and dismantled communities. Previous studies focus on housing redevelopment that minimizes the fraction of housing units left for poor residents and on interviewing residents only once the redevelopment has been announced. By contrast, this paper examines how residents over time experienced the HOPE VI redevelopment of the Orchard Park public housing project in Boston, which sought to preserve a low-income community. Using official records and a unique set of interviews with residents before and after redevelopment, we find marked declines in crime and increased residential satisfaction, which are attributed to changes in tenant composition. The redevelopment process reduced the total number of public housing units yet maintained the vast majority of housing for poor families while creating a new social mix. The findings suggest that to more fully capture the impacts of restructuring, existing theory must be expanded to consider who is displaced and how poverty is deconcentrated.     

Housing Tenure: Pacific Families in New Zealand

Home ownership has been associated with health, social and economic benefits. However, a decline in ownership has been observed over the past decade in New Zealand. Minority groups, including Pacific people, have been disadvantaged in the housing sector. This study investigated housing tenure and the relationship between tenure and health among mothers of a birth cohort of Pacific children in New Zealand. Findings showed that most families lived in state or private rental accommodation with few (15.4 per cent) owning their own homes. Homeowners were more likely to be older, partnered and have higher incomes. Better mental health was observed for homeowners compared to renters. Findings can inform housing and public health policy for Pacific families.     

New Zealand housing policy: Continuities and changes

The article reviews the development of New Zealand's housing policy from the early years of the present century when the foundations were laid for an interventionist social democratic‐style housing policy. This policy has increasingly come under pressure through changes within New Zealand's internal and external economy particularly during the 70s. In this decade and in the early 80s changes took place in the pattern of house building, the costs of construction, land and finance; leading to rapid escalations in prices and a growing problem of affordability. The change of Government in 1984 and the initiation of new policies by the Labour administration have produced a radical restructuring of the housing sector removing many of its protections through the de‐regulation of the financial market. The initial results have been rapidly rising interest rates together with shifts in patterns of building and in investments within financial institutions. These changes have led to a sharpening of divisions between those who are already owner occupiers and other householders and have exacerbated further the problem of housing affordability. The article concludes with some speculation as to the likely social and political consequences of these changes in macro‐economic policy.     

The Danish housing market: Housing policies for different housing tenure

Since 1987 interest and publication in Norwegian housing policies have increased significantly. This article deepens and widens my earlier published work on Norwegian housing policy, and it responds to some earlier reviews of my work. The central themes of the article are that Norway has used state policy to develop its housing sector over many decades; that since the mid‐1970s policy makers have had to adjust their housing system to national and international macro‐economic change; and that in a comparative perspective, Norway has pursued housing policies which have important anti‐poverty elements, some egalitarianism, and some useful choice and efficiencies. Norway has used balanced state, market, and self‐help roles to develop its housing sector, and the institutional framework in which these roles operate has been reformed since the late‐1970s in the light of changing economic, social, and political conditions. Changes in the international economy have been particularly significant as Norway depends upon the international economy to sustain its living standards, including its housing standards.     

‘Houston,we've got a problem’: The Political Construction of a Housing Affordability Metric in New Zealand

Since the global financial crisis, housing affordability has assumed increased policy significance in a number of countries around the world. At a national level, housing policy formation is subject to certain path dependency processes and embedded institutional structures. In this paper, I argue that housing policy formation in New Zealand is increasingly subject to global flows of policy ideas and that the development of new housing affordability policies draws upon networks of global policy agents, housing experts and private consultants. In particular, this research examines the manner in which a US-based private consultant's metric of housing affordability, and analysis of the causes of housing unaffordability, has been incorporated into policy-making and new legislation in New Zealand.     

Sliding Scale of Support: Government Intervention in Housing

Public and social housing providers in many countries around the world are trying to solve the problem of how to construct and maintain quality affordable housing at the lowest cost to both the government and tenants. As might be expected, each country has found its own solution to these issues, leading to a sliding scale in the degree of support that different governments give to their housing providers. This study examines developments in the UK, US, Sweden and New Zealand from the perspective of a credit rating agency.     

The Egalitarian city: The restructuring of Amsterdam

Since the mid‐1970s, urban policy makers have responded to the pressures of fiscal crisis and unemployment by reducing expenditures and subsidizing business for the purpose of stimulating economic growth. The behaviour of urban governments largely corresponded with the argument of Paul Peterson that cities were forced to pursue economic growth at the expense of redistribution. Nevertheless, the response to economic forces, while generally in a market‐oriented direction, was not uniform within western cities. In particular, the Amsterdam municipality remains notable for its egalitarian policies when compared with London or New York. Housing policy has been a major instrument in maintaining the quality of life for the city's lower‐income population. Because subsidized housing units, as well as recipients of individual housing benefits, are scattered throughout the city, housing policy has sharply restricted spatial inequality of households by income. Moreover, the very large public subsidy involved in housing construction, by keeping rent levels low and thereby raising disposable income, has contributed substantially to popular welfare, mitigating class differentiation and thereby weakening resistance to residential integration of different income groups. This paper examines policies for physical and economic development in Amsterdam and their effect on social and spatial inequality. The conclusion briefly compares Amsterdam's trajectory with that of London and New York, then finally attempts to explain the continuing differences.