Exploring Dual Housing Tenure Status as a Household Response to Demographic,Social and Economic Change

This article proposes that single housing tenure categories do not enable an understanding of the ways in which households use, occupy and own residential properties in the context of broad demographic, economic and social changes. Adapting work on sub-tenure housing choice, housing tenure is overlaid with ownership of residential property to develop four tenure types: Owner, Owner-Owner, Renter and Renter-Owner. Applying this typology in the Australian case provides valuable new insights, with 1.5 million households having dual housing tenure status, including almost one in eight private renters. More broadly, reconceptualising housing tenure to include ownership of other residential property can contribute to theoretical debates about household income and wealth; social status and identity; and social practices and life planning, potentially generating new research questions such as the extent to which Renter-Owners reflect new patterns of living or a response to affordability constraints, and the social identity and political affiliations of those with a dual tenure status.     

“Thank heavens for the lease”: histories of shared ownership

Drawing on and developing Kingdon’s multiple streams analysis, this article examines the development of one aspect of the UK’s low cost home ownership programme: shared ownership. We demonstrate how key human and non-human policy entrepreneurs were able to set the agenda from 1973–1983 in favour of shared ownership; they neutralized the alternatives, while retaining some of their instruments; and solved a number of early problems by bringing key players into the programme. Our data-sets include a range of archival material and elite interviews. The policy entrepreneurs included John Stanley (who was the housing minister in the First Thatcher government), the National Federation of Housing Associations, and the Building Societies Association. Our development of the multiple streams analysis is to argue that documents, including the lease, act as policy entrepreneurs in their own right. The lease was central to the development of shared ownership and its transformation into a model lease enrolled other organizations, most critically the building societies.     

Housing Reform and Home Ownership Behaviour in China: A Case Study in Guangzhou

The recent housing reform in China signifies the paradigm shift from central planning to market mechanisms in the allocation of housing resources. This paper aims to identify major determinants, household demographics and work unit characteristics in the tenure choice decision so that policy implications can be drawn. The case study on Guangzhou provides insights into Mainland household decisions on choosing the utility-maximising tenure mode. Empirical results indicate that the market allocation mechanism introduced by the housing reforms has not yet replaced the entrenched influence from work units on home ownership behaviour. The finding on unsatisfied home owners is rather unexpected.     

Tracking mobility in the housing choice voucher program: a household level examination in Florida,USA

Previous research on the housing choice voucher (HCV) program has focused on neighbourhoods where voucher holders reside at one point of time. Little is known about mobility of voucher households during their tenure in the program. Using an administrative dataset that spans 11 years for the state of Florida, this study evaluates how often voucher households move and their mobility outcomes, measured by the change of neighbourhood poverty. Findings reveal that HCV households moved frequently beginning in the early years of program participation. Between 2007 and 2013 there was a notable decrease of voucher presence in high-poverty areas. Regression analysis further suggests that rental housing market conditions are significantly associated with mobility outcomes. White, non-Hispanic households and those with higher incomes were more likely to move to lower poverty neighbourhoods, whereas disabled and formerly homeless households moved more frequently and were not as successful in accessing lower poverty areas.     

Telecommunications and Cities: International Perspectives

Most industrialised countries have been shifting to an information economy. Theireconomic structure is dominated by industries based on the collection, processing and transfer of information. Similar changes are taking place in the workforce, with a growing number of people employed in information-based occupations (OECD 1981).     

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.     

“It’s Just a Matter of Adjustment”: Residents’ Perceptions and the Potential for Low-impact Home Practices

In addition to material, spatial and thermal standards and norms that influence the resource intensity of home environments, a key indicator of the environmental impact related to housing is found in residents’ ways of life. Of interest to the study presented in this paper is how residents’ perceptions of home and living standards relate to opinions on environmental issues and the reduction of resource use, exploring the potential and willingness to engage in low-impact ways of living. Empirical material from a questionnaire (n = 156) and interview study (n = 22) with residents in a tenant-owned housing association in Sweden provides insights into conventions and perceptions surrounding practices primarily linked to voluntary simplicity, living smaller as well as sharing spaces and resources. The study emphasizes the need for understanding residents’ perspectives and the implications this might have for targeting the resource intensity of homes in future development and policy.     

Housing Tenure Preferences in the Post-privatisation Period: The Case of Slovenia

The privatisation of social housing transformed many transitional countries in Central and Eastern Europe into societies with predominant homeownership and a marginalised rental sector. The case of Slovenia shows that, despite a low level of government support of homeowners, the homeownership rate has remained at its unsustainably high level and households continue to express strong preferences for homeownership. The paper explores factors explaining current homeownership preferences in Slovenia. A comprehensive model of housing preferences is built. The model follows the proposition that tenure preferences are strongly influenced by general cultural norms and factors characterising the social, economic and political environments. The model is tested using structural equation modelling based on a survey of Slovenian households. The results reveal that the strong preferences for homeownership in Slovenia can be explained by the firm perceptions of the financial advantages of homeownership and by the lack of available rental alternatives.     

Quasi-marketising access to social housing in Britain: assessing the distributional impacts

Since 2000 growing numbers of British social landlords have emulated their Dutch counterparts by introducing a ‘quasi-market’ approach to letting vacant properties. Known in Britain as choice-based lettings (CBL), the new approach aspires to treat people seeking social housing as consumers and to encourage consumerist behaviour. This is consistent with a wider drive for UK welfare state reforms emphasizing ‘customer choice’. As in other policy areas (e.g., education and health) the widening of service-user choice in this area has given rise to concerns that a more market-like system could be to the detriment of already disadvantaged groups. In the CBL case, particular concerns have been expressed about the possible consequences for formerly homeless households. It has also been suggested that, in shifting responsibility for decisions on matching properties and people from landlords to house-seekers themselves, CBL might exacerbate ethnic segregation. Drawing on a government-commissioned study focusing on early CBL schemes in England and Scotland, this paper examines these hypotheses in the light of empirical evidence. The analysis finds no indication that formerly homeless households tend to be disadvantaged under CBL in terms of area popularity or property quality. And, in general, the system appears to produce a more spatially dispersed—rather than a more concentrated—pattern of lettings to ethnic minority households.

Housing and the Material Imagination – Earth,Fire, Air and Water

This paper focuses on the possibilities of the material imagination as a theoretical and practical lens for contemporary housing research. The emphasis is on housing/home as complex material cultural assemblages interwoven across the four key ancient elements: earth, air, fire and water. The principle behind the material imagination is that “matter” – which we are immersed in and indeed ourselves composed of – is important, indeed underpins everything, and yet is typically rendered invisible within housing theory and research. As a critical response to social scientific engagement – “a needed radical corrective” – the potential of the material imagination for housing theory and practice is considered in ways that purposively attend to the elemental dimensions of housing as dynamic, fluid environments comprised of living matter. Suggestions for taking this approach forward through empirical housing studies are outlined.