Becoming a landlord: strategies of property-based welfare in the private rental sector in Great Britain

Ongoing neoliberal policies have realigned the links between housing and welfare, positioning residential property investment – commonly through homeownership and exceptionally also through landlordism – at the core of households’ asset-building strategies. Nonetheless, the private rented sector (PRS) has been commonly portrayed as a tenure option for tenants rather than a welfare strategy for landlords. Drawing on qualitative interviews with landlords across Great Britain, we explore landlords’ different motivations in engaging in landlordism; and the ways in which their property-based welfare strategies are shaped by the particular intersection of individual socioeconomic and life-course circumstances, and the broader socioeconomic and financial environment. By employing a constructionist grounded approach to research, our study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the different ways that asset-based welfare strategies operate within the PRS. We draw attention to an understudied nexus between homeownership and landlordism which we argue represents a promising route for future research.     

The inhibition of graphite oxidation by phosphorus additives

Impregnation of graphite with organic phosphate and phosphite esters has been found to result in increased resistance to air oxidation at elevated temperatures. Thermal decomposition of the phosphorus compounds at 200–600°C leaves a hydrophilic residue strongly adsorbed on the graphite surface at active sites where oxidation normally occurs.