The affordability of “affordable” housing in England: conditionality and exclusion in a context of welfare reform

Abstract

Contemporary debates around affordability have largely focused on homeownership and private renting. This article considers the affordable social rented sector in England, in which reforms to social welfare assistance, reduced security of tenure, and a shift towards mid-market rents, are changing access to ‘affordable’ housing for those on the lowest incomes. Drawing on in-depth interviews with housing associations and stakeholders, the article highlights the increasing use of affordability assessments for prospective tenants. These assessments interact with mid-market rental products to increase the potential for exclusion from affordable housing on the grounds of ability to pay. This conditionality is applied not only at the point of tenancy access, but also at renewal of fixed-term tenancies. The research highlights that the combination of welfare and housing policies, in the context of a financialising housing association sector, has the potential to erode access to social housing for those who are perceived as a financial risk, reshaping the focus of social housing.     

Rethinking professional practice: the logic of competition and the crisis of identity in housing practice

The relationship between professionalism, education and housing practice has become increasingly strained following the introduction of austerity measures and welfare reforms across a range of countries. Focusing on the development of UK housing practice, this article considers how notions of professionalism are being reshaped within the context of welfare retrenchment and how emerging tensions have both affected the identity of housing professionals and impacted on the delivery of training and education programmes. The article analyses the changing knowledge and skills valued in contemporary housing practice and considers how the sector has responded to the challenges of austerity. The central argument is that a dominant logic of competition has culminated in a crisis of identity for the sector. Although the focus of the article is on UK housing practice, the processes identified have a wider relevance for the analysis of housing and welfare delivery in developed economies.     

Assembling an innovative social housing project in Melbourne: mapping the potential for social innovation

Abstract

In Australia, echoing trends in the UK, US and Canada, provision of social housing has transitioned from government-led mechanisms to an increasing focus on partnerships between private developers, government and the not-for-profit sector. In this context, social housing is often achieved via the ‘cobbling together’ of necessary resources over time. This article focuses on an innovative social housing project in the inner west of Melbourne, Australia, that involves the modular construction of 57 transportable dwellings located on government-owned land. I apply a theoretical framework that combines insights from social innovation literature and assemblage to understand the process of assembling a pilot project and to chart how the project may be scaled up or scaled out to challenge the system in which homelessness occurs. The research highlights the role of community housing providers as ‘pivot points’ in the social housing sector and acknowledges the importance of credibility, funding, legislative change and construction innovation in scaling housing social innovations.     

Housing Associations in the Republic of Ireland: Can They Respond to the Government's Challenge for Major Expansion?

In the late 1990s, faced with rapid escalation in house prices and rising housing stress, politicians and policy-makers in the Republic of Ireland expressed widespread concern about inadequacies in social housing provision. In one of a series of responses the government has recently announced an ambitious plan to promote and to resource the existing small housing association movement so that its annual output would increase eightfold in the early years of the new century. There is little existing research on the work of housing associations in the Republic of Ireland or about their contribution to housing provision and policy and there is clearly an urgent need for a careful analysis of the capacity of the voluntary sector and of its strengths, weaknesses and potential. Pending such a study, this paper aims to provide an overview of the voluntary sector's development in the context of the evolution of Irish housing policy and considers some of the developmental and policy issues which will arise from the government's decision to promote the voluntary and co-operative sector.     

‘From Choice to Chance’: choice-based letting use in forced tenant relocations in New South Wales,Australia

Abstract

The redevelopment of large social housing estates has emerged as a central policy response to address housing affordability and social housing crises in Australia. These projects, often done in partnership with the private sector, are seen as opportunities to leverage government land assets and increase densities to expand social and private housing stock. While extensive research has been conducted on the rationale and processes of estate renewal, less attention has been paid to tenant relocation practices. This is the focus of this article. In particular we explore the New South Wales Government’s use of a choice-based letting program called ‘My Property Choice’ (MPC) that involves tenants bidding via a ballot system for available social housing properties. We argue, despite policy rhetoric emphasising resident ‘choice’, MPC emerges as a chance-based process for tenants seeking to ‘win’ their desired relocation destinations.     

The Politics of “Parental Co-Habitation”: Austerity,Household, and the Social Evils of Dependency

The household as a social formation is being assigned a renewed function in the provision of social welfare via neoliberal austerity politics. Government inaction regarding housing provision is forcing millions of young adults into “parental co-habitation”. In contrast to the dominant ideological view of the family as a school of liberty through the provision of welfare, this article argues that the dependence of millions of young adults on the parental household is degenerative both for the individual “recipient” and for the future democratic character of the polity. Mobilizing a Neo-Roman analysis of Liberty, I argue that housing policy is promoting the long-term creation of “slaves” as part of a wider strategy of oligarchic domination. The article seeks to articulate an explicitly political theoretical critique of “parental co-habitation” and advocates for directed government action in the area of housing provision to secure the autonomy and independence of a generation otherwise reduced to “slavishness”.     

Transforming Australia's Social Housing: Pointers from the British Stock Transfer Experience

The expanding provision of affordable housing by non-profit community housing organisations, coupled with possibilities of substantial stock transfer from State Housing Authorities, suggest Australia's social housing sector may be entering a transformative phase. Based on a review of restructuring in Britain, where over the last 25 years, traditionally owned and managed ‘council housing’ has been reduced from over 90 per cent to less than 30 per cent of overall social housing stock, this article considers possible policy implications for Australia. In particular, it analyses British experience which could inform Australian decisions on organisational size, institutional vehicles and governance structures within the context of the future programme of stock transfers envisaged by many commentators on the Australian housing scene.

     

Social Mix Discourse and Local Resistance to Social Housing: The Case of the Nation Building Economic Stimulus Plan,Australia

In response to the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2009, the Australian government introduced the Nation Building Economic Stimulus Plan. Central to the plan was the allocation of AU$5 billion to the construction of 19 000 new social housing dwellings. The construction was seen by the Australian government to be a way of stimulating the economy and adding to the social housing sector. While social housing construction was supported by the not-for-profit sector and academics, a number of localised disputes arose. This article traces the ways in which the discourse of social mix was mobilised by residents to resist social housing construction. Simultaneously, the discourse of social mix was used to position residents as supporters of social housing, while actively seeking to resist new construction in their neighbourhood, which was positioned as running counter to the ideals embedded within the discourse. In promoting the perceived benefits embedded within the discourse of social mix, residents mobilised a complex resistance strategy that worked to destabilise claims of self-interest and NIMBYism.     

Local Housing Agencies in Rural Wales

This paper explores patterns of local housing agency collaboration in rural Wales between 1988 and 1994. It considers how the financial and land-transfer contribution of public sector partners has changed over this period and examines the implications of these changes. The paper attempts to outline possible future patterns of joint activity and looks at how changes may im pact upon the nature and scale of housing service delivery. It concludes that amidst many uncertainties (relating in particular to the demarcation of roles), one final outcome of current processes, typified by local government reorganisation, may be a centralisation of housing provision which will threaten locally based control and undermine accountability.     

The Limits and Potentials of the Housing Market Enabling Paradigm: An Evaluation of China's Housing Policies from 1998 to 2011

This paper examines the housing policies in China in the last 14 years in the context of the international debate on the World Bank's housing market enabling strategy to improve low-income housing provision in developing countries. A review of China's urban housing outcomes reveals housing price inflation and shortage of affordable housing in the fast expanding housing market. The paper analyzes policies to increase both demand for and supply of housing and argues that these policies have contributed to worsening affordability. This situation has been exacerbated by problems in the institutional framework managing the housing sector. The paper concludes that market enabling alone is not sufficient to achieve a satisfactory housing outcome for low- and middle-income groups in Chinese cities. It advocates more effective and direct public intervention for enhancing social housing provision and tightening market regulation to address both market and government failures to improve housing conditions for lower income groups.     

Post-Socialist Housing Systems in Europe: Housing Welfare Regimes by Default?

This article develops a conceptual framework derived from welfare regime and concomitant literatures to interpret housing reform in post-socialist European countries. In it, settled power structures and collective ideologies are necessary prerequisites for the creation of distinctive housing welfare regimes with clear roles for the state, market and households. Although the defining feature of post-socialist housing has been mass-privatisation to create super-homeownership societies, the emphatic retreat of the state that this represents has not been replaced by the creation of the institutions or cultures required to create fully financialised housing markets. There is, instead, a form of state legacy welfare in the form of debt-free home-ownership, which creates a gap in housing welfare that has been partially filled by households in the form of intergenerational assistance (familialism) and self-build housing. Both of these mark continuities with the previous regime. The latter is especially common in south-east Europe where its frequent illegality represents a form of anti-state housing. The lack of settled ideologies and power structures suggests that these housing welfare regimes by default will persist as part of a process that resembles a path-dependent ‘transformation’ rather than ‘transition’.     

Homeowner investor subjects as providers of family care and assistance

Abstract

This article asks: What becomes of the idealized asset-accumulating investor subject rallied in asset-based welfare policy and discourse in the context of mounting social risks facing families? It brings into dialogue two disconnected literatures: one on financialized subjectivities, drawing on post-structuralist and Foucauldian analysis, the other on welfare states drawing more heavily on comparative political economy. Drawing on homeowner interviews in Melbourne (Australia), it identifies how parent homeowners’ devise housing strategies to manage their children’s housing welfare risks. Their housing investment and landlordism strategies align with financialized subjectivities, but other strategies subvert or reject these subject positions. Its first contribution is to specify how an Australian refamilization of welfare responsibilities, including for housing, is unfolding as processes of financialization erode the efficacy of growing state social spending. Its second contribution is to challenge the individual subject of asset-based welfare (ABW) and introduce intergenerational assistance as an under-explored contingency for ABW projects, and further driver for welfare inequalities between and within generations.     

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.     

Private Rental Housing in Hong Kong

This paper examines selected aspects of housing policy and its influence on private rental housing in Hong Kong. Its ambitions are modest, in part because so little research has been conducted on the sector, as a consequence of the small size of the sector as well as the concentration of socio-political, economic and policy analyses on the other major housing sectors, namely public renting and home ownership. It is argued that a fundamental function of private renting, to provide a functional substitute and counter-balance to distortions in the market for private home ownership, has been systematically undermined in Hong Kong. In spite of its historical importance in meeting Hong Kong people's housing needs, the sector's decline has been steep and it can now be fairly described as a marginalised tenure, despite incomplete structural adjustment post- Asian Financial Crisis. It is suggested that a fundamental reason for the decline of the private rental sector has been the impact of government policy, which undermined the private rental sector and thus an important element of the market mechanism in housing provision. The government's ideology of home ownership has also functioned to transfer lower middle-income families into the owner occupied sector. Although the Hong Kong government has not been as overtly hostile to this sector as governments have been elsewhere, it nevertheless also seems to envisage no real role for the private rental sector in a housing delivery system molded by policy preference for home ownership, rather than fostering viable economic competition by also facilitating an efficient private rental sector.     

Housing Policy Changes in Ghana in the 1990s

The housing sector in Ghana has undergone fundamental changes since the 1990s. Policy focus has shifted away from direct state provision and has moved strongly towards active private sector participation in housing production, financing and production of building materials. In part, this is due to the failure of public housing programmes, dwindling state resources, unimpressive performance of state-owned enterprises, and recognition that the government alone is unable to solve the housing problem. On a broader scale, the changes are rooted in liberalization ideologies that have swept through most economies in the 1980s and 1990s, which have had varying effects on people's housing need and on the national economy. The purpose of this paper is to examine these effects, to offer some interpretations, and to outline some of the lingering challenges facing the country's housing sector.     

Club Goods and Local Government

Problem: Private approaches to urban service provision are becoming more popular. Some argue these approaches are more efficient and more democratic than government provision because they are voluntary. While these club approaches can shift the burden of infrastructure finance to direct groups of users, they can also fragment urban service delivery and justify unevenness in service quality across the city.

Purpose: This article explores examples of club goods, that is, common interest developments (CIDS) for housing, business improvement districts (BIDs) for commercial areas, and economic development zones (EDZs) for commercial and industrial areas, and assesses their implications for local government. Emphasis is given to how clubs internalize benefits to members of the club but shed externalities onto the broader local government system. A critical governance concern is the impact on the long-term ability of local government to coordinate across disparate elements and interests in the community.

Methods: I discuss three types of clubs ranging from totally private common interest developments (home owners associations), to partially private business improvement districts, to totally public economic development zones. These club types are analyzed in terms of economic benefits, externalities, governance structure, and broader concerns with equity and sustainability.

Results and conclusions: Club good approaches to urban infrastructure delivery enhance private investment and reduce costs to cities, but they also shed externalities onto the broader city. Although these clubs are often private associations, this article shows how they are critically supported by government, beyond the property rights requirement assumed by most theorists. A further concern is that club approaches may undermine support for equity and redistribution at the broader city level.

Takeaway for practice: Local governments are under pressure to provide public goods efficiently and engage private voluntary approaches whenever possible. The efficiency and popularity of club approaches derives in part from their ability to capture the benefits of increased investment for internal benefit. However, local government managers also must manage diversity and build public support for investment to ensure equity across the urban territory. Balancing the benefits of club goods with the need for broader urban integration is a key challenge for planners and urban managers.

Research support: None.     

Housing and the Realignment of Urban Socio-Spatial Contracts

Abstract

This paper argues that narratives of the Big Society and Localism in England enacted through housing and planning policies, and housing welfare and benefit reforms across the entire United Kingdom, partly articulate, but primarily mask, a particular governmental response to the present structural crisis in housing and its sociological impacts. This response may be located within a wider political project aimed at realigning understandings of cities and the right for working class and younger populations to occupy urban space and access welfare as enacted through affordable and decent homes. The paper utilizes social contract theory to suggest that the promotion of localism in housing systems needs to be understood within wider struggles of naming the world and reframing the respective rights and responsibilities of the state and particular population groups. The paper concludes that Big Society rationales represent an implicit acknowledgement of a regressive reduction in the ambition of government to address the housing crisis as it affects low- and middle-income populations and its related social consequences.     

Telling stories: the role of narratives in rental housing policy change in New Zealand

Abstract

This paper examines the emergence of the regulation of housing conditions in the private rental sector as a policy issue in New Zealand using an analysis of narratives in media, advocacy and political texts. Narratives are evident in public discourse and are the stories told by interest groups to identify and cast a problem as a policy issue in a way analogous to the beliefs of the speaker. This case study shows that while the narratives used by advocates for policy change were effective in raising the issue, they were ineffective in overcoming a counter-narrative of excessive regulation by the government and concerns of possible rent rises. This opposition to regulation of the private sector by a right-leaning government needs to be more effectively countered by more powerful intersecting narratives, if evidence on the relationship between housing, health and safety is to become the basis for effectively implemented government policy.     

A perennial problem? On underoccupation in English council housing

Abstract

Addressing the issue of underoccupation has been a prominent feature in English social housing policy since the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government was formed in 2010. A key move under the Coalition’s welfare reform agenda was the implementation of the underoccupancy penalty—the so-called ‘bedroom tax’—from April 2013. However, while this policy triggered high-profile protests, it does not represent a novel policy preoccupation. Variations on the theme have recurred in housing policy debates almost since the advent of council housing. This paper adopts a long-term perspective and presents a sociological institutionalist analysis which focuses on the mechanisms through which underoccupation has been governed. Drawing on a range of archival material, we argue that the government of underoccupation has undergone revealing transformations over the period since 1929. Not only does the broader policy context—understandings of the purpose of social housing and the role it fulfils in the housing market—differ over time, but, at the more detailed level of policy instruments, the mechanisms proposed to address underoccupation differ in ways that can be explained in terms of prevailing policy logics and institutional structures. Most significantly, the nature of the underoccupation problem has been framed differently: the rationales offered as justification for policy action draw on very different vocabularies, in ways that allow us to trace the influence of more fundamental shifts in policy discourse into the domain of housing policy.