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Social Rented Housing in the (DIS)United Kingdom: Can Different Social Housing Regime Types Exist within the Same Nation State?
Abstract
Welfare and housing regime literature has treated nation states as being uniform regime types. However, there is growing interest in the possible development of distinct regimes below the level of nation states. This article applies regime theory though a robust analytical framework to the devolution of social housing policy to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies within the UK. We establish that prior to devolution, the UK’s social housing regime was firmly located within a residual model, but one that operated as a ‘safety net’. Particularly since the adoption of austerity by the UK Government in 2010 and divergence in political outlook between UK and devolved administrations, England’s social housing regime is beginning to morph into an ‘ambulance service’, whilst the ‘safety net’ model is being maintained in Northern Ireland and Wales, and strengthened in Scotland. However, with few powers with which to influence the ‘wider welfare regime’, high levels of poverty mean that the ‘boundaries of possibilities’ for the devolved administrations to create more than this distinctive regime sub-type – and so to move to a ‘social market’ performing a ‘wider affordability’ role – are limited. The theoretical and analytical framework developed in this article is capable of being applied to sub-nation state jurisdictions in other countries, and so enrichen comparative analysis.
... As with other social policies, the nation-state is the dominant unit of analysis in the research on housing policies (Hoeskstra, 2020), which mainly links them to the type of welfare regime in each state. However, with globalisation and political decentralisation in recent decades, regional and local governments have gained relevance as providers of welfare (McEwen & Moreno, 2005), including access to housing (Stephens, 2019;Hoeskstra, 2020). In many post-industrial democracies, key redistribution and cohesion competences have been transferred to the regional level (Keating, 2020), creating dynamics associated with the 'territorialisation or regionalisation of welfare' (McEwen & Moreno, 2005;Costa-Font & Greer, 2013). ...
... In many post-industrial democracies, key redistribution and cohesion competences have been transferred to the regional level (Keating, 2020), creating dynamics associated with the 'territorialisation or regionalisation of welfare' (McEwen & Moreno, 2005;Costa-Font & Greer, 2013). In housing policy, regional governments are acquiring greater relevance in countries such as the UK (Stephens, 2019), Germany (Haffner, 2021) and Spain . Meanwhile, as many cities worldwide grapple with housing issues, innovative housing policies are being implemented (Kadi et al., 2021) by local governments, which are becoming more prominent as shapers of housing policies in many European welfare states (Wollmann, 2016). ...
... As political decentralisation has become a structuring factor in contemporary political life, the predominance of the state level as a unit of analysis has come into question and the need to examine the role of regional and local governments in housing policy has become clearer (Hoeskstra, 2020;Stephens, 2019). Welfare devolution has been linked to privatization processes in some countries (Smith, 2002), particularly in relation to the provision of social housing services (Hunter, 2010). ...
Housing policies have become increasingly regionalised but studies at sub-state levels are scarce and most research still focuses on the nation-state as the unit of analysis. This paper aims to address this gap by examining the development of regional housing policies in Spain. From an initial analysis of regional housing laws, three sub-state housing policy models were identified. Then, six case studies were examined to determine influencing factors and the relevance of regional political party positioning along centre-periphery and left-right cleavages. This research adds new information to the literature on the regionalisation of housing policies and provides insight about the role of subnational governments in generating alternatives to neoliberal housing policies.
... Se on kuitenkin edelleen verrattain laaja, 17 % asuntokannasta. (Fitzpatrick & Watts, 2017;Stephens 2019.) Britannian vuokramarkkinoilla on käytössä kaksi erillistä kysyntätukea: vapaarahoitteisessa vuokra-asunnossa asuvan asumistuki ja julkisin varoin tuetussa vuokra-asunnossa asuvan asumistuki. ...
... Bedroom Tax on voimassa myös Skotlannissa, mutta sen vaikutuksia on pyritty vaimentamaan. (Stephens 2019.) Skotlannissa asuntokanta jakautuu omistusasuntoihin, yksityisiin ja sosiaalisiin vuokra-asuntoihin. ...
... isia asuntoja on tuotettu yli 50.000 tarveharkinnan, suunnittelun ja maankäytön ohjauksen avulla. (Lawson & Ruonavaara 2020.) Sosiaalisen asuntosektorin supistumista on hillitty rajoittamalla oikeutta vuokra-asunnon ostamiseen (Right to Buy) vuodesta 2011 lähtien. Vuonna 2016 Right to Buy lakkautettiin Skotlannissa sen jäädessä voimaan Englannissa.(Stephens 2019.) ...
Ympäristöministeriö tilasi selvityksen osana asuntopoliittisen kehittämisohjelman valmistelua. Hallitusohjelman mukaan osana asuntopoliittista kehittämisohjelmaa tulisi tehdä kansainvälinen asumisen tukien, lainsäädännön ja vuokramarkkinoiden vertailu. Selvityksessä kuvataan eräiden Euroopan maiden asuntopolitiikkaa aiheina asumisen kohtuuhintaisuus, yksityiset vuokramarkkinat sekä väestöltään vähenevien alueiden asumisongelmat. Asumismeno-osuuksin mitaten Suomessa asuminen on vertailumaihin nähden kohtuuhintaista, mutta suomalaiset arvioivat asumismenonsa rasittavimmiksi kuin monissa vertailumaissa. Asumismenojen kalleus kohdistuu väestöryhmiin eriarvoisesti, ja etenkin vuokralla asuvat ja pienituloiset maksavat asumisestaan suhteessa muita enemmän. Kaikissa tarkastelluissa maissa asuntopolitiikassa on tapahtunut ideologinen ja poliittinen käänne kohti markkinaperusteista asuntohuoltoa, ja yksityisen vuokrasektorin merkitys kohtuuhintaisuuden kysymyksessä on korostunut. Vuokrien kohtuuhintaisuutta on eri maissa edistetty sekä vuokranantajille suunnatuilla kannustimilla että vuokrasektorin säätelyllä. Pohjoismaissa syrjäseutujen asumisongelmat liittyvät asuntojen arvon laskuun, tyhjiin asuntoihin, yksipuoliseen asuntokantaan ja väestön ikääntymiseen. Ongelmia on pyritty ratkaisemaan sekä tukemalla asuntojen purkamista että niiden käyttötarkoituksen muuttamista.
... Although a review of past studies suggests that extensive sustainable housing research has been undertaken in recent years (Csoknyai et al., 2016;Haidar & Bahammam, 2021;Karji, Woldesenbet, Khanzadi, & Tafazzoli, 2019;Krehl, Siedentop, Taubenböck, & Wurm, 2016;Mirkatouli, Samadi, & Hosseini, 2018;Moreno-Monroy, Schiavina, & Veneri, 2020;Scanlon, Fernández Arrigoitia, & Whitehead, 2015;Stephens, 2019;Wetzstein, 2019), none of them has tried to enlighten the discussion of how to sustainably recover WoUFs in developing countries. Indeed, the studies produced on WoUFs have focused on: the identification of WoUFs (Sarvari, Rakhshanifar, Tamošaitienė, Chan, & Beer, 2019), the collection of internal and external factors affecting the worn-out texture (Amini et al., 2018;Gorjinia & Amini, 2016), the weight of these factors to identify a prioritization for an intervention (Mosayyebzadeh, Pourhasanzadeh, & Ghaffari, 2020;Samiei & Sayafzadeh, 2016), and the scrutinization of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of WoUFs (Akbar Pour Saraskanroud, Pourahmad, & Abedini, 2011;Jaliz, Karim, & Nazmfar, 2020), without, however, identifying the most suitable housing pattern for recovering WoUFs. ...
... In line with similar studies (Ruá, Huedo, Civera, & Agost-Felip, 2019), expert opinions of 40 professionals in urban management and urban development models were obtained through a field survey and questionnaire. Initially, the relevance of criteria (e.g., number of household members, cultural diversity, building affordability, household income level, etc.) for assessing housing patternsi.e., supportive housing (Ziyari, Parhiz, Mahdnejhad, & Ashtari, 2011), rental housing (Stephens, 2019), social housing (Giannetti, Demétrio, Agostinho, Almeida, & Liu, 2018;Scanlon et al., 2015), and Mehr housing (Bahmani & Ghaedrahmati, 2016;Karji et al., 2019) have been collected by answering questions using five-point Likert scales. Then, opinions of experts on the criteria with regard to each housing pattern have been analyzed through the Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) method. ...
... Rental Housing: Given the growth and expansion of urbanization, as well as the social and cultural changes resulting from the advances in community development, it is important to note that renting (paying rent to live in someone else's home) is one of the most important forms of housing (Gilderbloom & Appelbaum, 1987), especially in metropolitan areas and it has a great influence on housing policies (Stephens, 2019). Rental housingin citieshas been one of the types of housing in most housing planning systems. ...
The restoration of Worn-out Urban Fabrics (WoUFs), i.e., the disfiguration of fabric components of the city from their main shape, and the implementation of the urban housing development plan have always been pivotal activities for designing livable cities-especially in developing countries. Prior research, however, did not identify an appropriate model of sustainable housing development for the recovery of WoUFs. To fill this gap, housing development patterns-i.e., supportive housing, Mehr housing, rental, and social housing-aimed at restoring the WoUF of the Hemmatabad district in Isfahan city (Iran) were studied. Expert opinions, on the criteria affecting the selection of housing development patterns, from 40 professionals in urban management and urban development models were collected and then analyzed by the Analytic Hierarchical Process and VIKOR method. It resulted that, in order to revive the WoUF of Hemmatabad, social housing is the more desirable pattern of housing development (Q i = 1) compared to supportive housing (Q i = 0.911), Mehr housing (Q i = 0.117) and rental housing (Q i = 0.004). Results help governments of developing countries in directing their effort in the decision of which housing development pattern for WoUFs to implement.
... The social rented sector in the UK is one of the oldest in Europe (Ravetz, 2001) and at its height in the 1970s housed a third of households (Stephens, 2019). At this time, tenants had varying backgrounds and income levels (Forest & Murie, 1988), but by the early 1990s the policies of successive Conservative governments resulted in significantly less social housing units being built, and the sale of 2.5 million UK social housing homes under the Right-to-Buy scheme 1980-2013 (Adam et al., 2015). ...
... This transformed social housing into 'a "residual" sector performing a "safety net" function' (Stephens, 2019, p. 46). The broad purpose of the social rented sector in the UK is to provide sub-market rental housing and low-cost home-ownership to households whose needs are not met by the market (Stephens, 2019). This article focuses specifically on the English housing association context because it is here that social housing provision is being reimagined to a much greater extent than in the devolved territories of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. ...
... The implementation of reforms to security of tenure and social assistance enhance the 'ambulance service' function of the sector (Stephens, 2019). This is largely in-line with the residualized nature of the Australian social housing system (Parsell et al., 2019;Pawson & Hulse, 2011). ...
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.
... This briefing paper aims to open up a discussion of what are increasingly diverging social housing policies across the UK. We do this by presenting a short overview of social rented housing in Scotland since devolution (Stephens 2017;Gibb 2017). The following sections discuss, firstly, the phased abolition of the Right to Buy in Scotland and, secondly, the targeted increase in affordable housing supply across Scotland together with the Scottish Government's housing policy for reaching this target. ...
... This change was a result of various mechanisms including the Right-to-Buy, liberal access to home ownership and mortgage borrowing, a rapidly growing private rented sector and the low levels of new social housing. Alongside this decline, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland a 'safety net model' for social housing emerged (Stephens 2017). In Scotland, by contrast, "there is an effort to strengthen it (social housing) through the extension of homeless people's rights to housing, the abolition of Right to Buy, the mitigation of the 'bedroom tax' and the commitment to an enhanced social housebuilding programme" (Stephens 2017, p.14). ...
... Scotland had the highest social housing ratio among the UK nations, and this remains the case with social housing making up almost one-quarter of the total housing stock (Stephens 2017). ...
Scotland, compared to other UK nations, has a larger social housing sector. Despite this, the absolute and relative size of the sector has been shrinking following the UK trends, even if it still amounts to almost a quarter of all homes. Following devolution in 1999, housing policy in Scotland has diverged from the rest of the UK, and particularly with respect to England. In addition, in the current parliamentary term it is expected that Scottish social housing will grow in absolute terms, as a consequence of a sustained new building programme for social and affordable housing, and the end of the Right to Buy (RTB).
This situation makes the Scottish case worth exploring. This paper briefly sets out the background of social housing policy change in Scotland since devolution, while also presenting the contemporary Scottish policy framework for social housing. Key aspects of the policy such as the aforementioned RTB abolition and the new social and affordable supply programme are reviewed. The briefing paper concludes that Scotland’s divergence from the UK is accelerating. Looking forward, this policy divergence needs ongoing evidenced evaluation (not least to consider their possible transferability). The Scottish Government is now looking forward in terms of fundamental long-term housing strategy beyond the current parliament. There remains much to play for.
... legislation, planning, and taxation) (Hoekstra 2020;Whitehead and Goering 2021). Housing interacts within broader social and economic institutional contexts (Stephens 2011(Stephens , 2019, such as national social and housing policy systems, and monetary and fiscal policies. Housing issues are notoriously difficult to solve within a single government department or through isolated policy measures (Stephens 2011;Meen and Whitehead 2020). ...
... I applied an institutional-based approach (Czischke and van Bortel 2018; Whitehead and Goering 2021), comparing policies and programmes and their implementation to increase affordability. I considered housing policies' system-embeddedness (Stephens 2011(Stephens , 2019, that is, I analysed the housing system in interaction with broader social and economic structures. I also considered local context specificities such as histories, demographics, and political party compositions in the analysis, and situated them against the national framework (Hoekstra 2020). ...
Land use and housing development policies are crucial for promoting housing affordability. As municipalities have considerable power over these policies, local variations in affordability measures occur. Focusing on three Finnish municipalities (Helsinki, Tampere, and Turku), this study analysed differences in promoting affordability. A content analysis based on expert interviews (N = 22) and policy documents showed how one of the municipalities (Turku) differed from the other two. Turku had less administrative capacity for policy implementation and more volatility in social rental housing targets, which indicates a less active role in steering the housing market compared to Helsinki and Tampere.
... 136-137). During this period, where UK governments were committed to the welfare state, there was mass construction of social housingit grew to represent nearly a third of the overall housing stock and was largely seen as providing for working families and ex-servicemen (Fitzpatrick and Pawson, 2014;Stephens, 2019). ...
... The selective selling off of social rented accommodation to relatively better off households through Right to Buy has arguably led to the remaining social rented dwellings being even more closely targeted at those with the most social need (Bailey, 2020). Consequently, the SRS now plays more of a 'safety net' function rather than a 'wider affordability' function, and this is reinforced by the legal duties placed on local authorities to house unintentionally homeless households in priority need (Stephens andLeishman, 2017, p. 1040 With regard to housing costs under Universal Credit specifically, throughout its rollout so far there has tended to be more of an equal split between claimants in the social versus private rented sectors (perhaps because social tenants were more likely to already be claiming HB and thus do not transfer over to UC until they have a change of circumstances or in the 'managed migration' phase of rollout). This is highlighted in Figure 6.1, which shows that there was an almost identical number of households on UC (with housing costs) in the SRS and PRS up to the latter stages of 2017. ...
A country’s welfare system can have a profound impact on the housing security of its citizens. Welfare systems which include adequate provision of housing allowances can act as a ‘buffer’ that prevents an automatic association between persistent low-income, or a sudden loss of income, and loss of housing. In the UK, Universal Credit (UC) has been rolling out gradually since 2013 to replace six working-age means-tested benefits with a single payment. This represents a major change to the welfare system, and its design of long wait periods, increased conditionality and direct payments has led to concerns over housing security impacts.
Using quantitative research methods, this thesis exploits cross-area variation in the timing of UC rollout (arising from the fact that it was introduced in different areas at different times – a form of natural experiment) in order to measure its impacts on housing insecurity. This is carried out by linking data on the timing of UC rollout (at the local authority level) with panel data from administrative/survey datasets on housing insecurity indicators over time
Housing insecurity for financial reasons can occur in four, increasingly severe, stages: (1) difficulties meeting rent payments, (2) build up of rent arrears, (3) legal repossession actions by landlord, and (4) threatened or actual homelessness. This thesis involves four separate empirical studies, with each making use of different data sources to examine UC’s impact on different indicators and stages of insecurity. Empirical studies 1 and 2 are fixed effects panel designs examining the impact of UC rollout, respectively, on rates of landlord repossession actions, and advice sought from Citizens Advice on rent arrears/homelessness issues, within English local authorities. Empirical study 3, which is also a fixed effects panel design, examines the impact of UC rollout on rates of ‘Housing Options’ approaches and official homelessness claims within Scottish local authorities. Finally, empirical study 4 is a difference-in-differences analysis of data from the ‘Understanding Society’ survey, examining the impact of UC rollout on household financial problems.
Overall, the results suggest that, up to 2019, UC rollout was associated with increases in rates of household problems paying for housing/bills/council tax payments, rent arrears advice issues, landlord repossession actions and ‘Housing Options’ approaches. Taken together, these results provide a robust indication that UC rollout has weakened the UK welfare system’s ability to provide housing security to low-income households.
... Housing policy was not completely unified across the two countries prior to devolution; rather, there were nuanced differences, and distinctive governance arrangements (Gibb, Maclennan, & O'Sullivan, 2017). Since the re-establishing of the Scottish Parliament, however, there has been significant primary and secondary legislation and other local policy innovations in each country (Gibb, 2012;Stephens, 2019). This has been particularly true of homelessness, private renting, and assistance to the home ownership sector (e.g. the Help to Buy scheme 1 ). ...
... The contribution that the paper makes is two-fold. First, while there is a small literature contrasting housing policy in a devolved UK (Gibb, 2012(Gibb, , 2015McKee, Muir, & Moore, 2017;Stephens, 2019), this is the first attempt to assess the outcomes of policy divergence and try to explain why major spending programmes took the form they did and had specific outcomes. Second, the paper adopts an approach to its evaluation of the programmes based primarily around two approaches to policy success and failure (King & Crewe, 2013;Schuck, 2014). ...
Within the UK, Scotland and England operate largely devolved housing policy systems (This paper does not discuss Wales or Welsh housing policy. Much of the same analysis can and should be done concerning the relative divergence of policy between Wales and England (and convergence between Wales and Scotland) – but that would need to be another paper). Since the 2010 advent of fiscal austerity, housing policy has diverged significantly with respect to affordable and social housing supply programmes. Scotland has returned to council house building and retained a significant grant-funded programme aimed at delivering supply targets intended to tackle unmet housing need. In England, in contrast, following the Coalition Government’s Affordable Homes Programme, the response has been to greatly diminish social housing programmes and to replace them with less generous ‘affordable’ supply programmes for ownership and rent. This experience masks fundamentally different policy settings and assumptions about the housing problem in each country. This paper will first set out the context and mechanisms of housing policy prior to the switch to deficit reduction and austerity, before briefly outlining the policy instruments and strategies adopted in both countries, contrasting their impacts and outcomes. Second, it will investigate the relative effectiveness of these policies, drawing on a synthesis of critical policy science and public policy literatures. The final section discusses the findings in a forward-looking way and also reflects on possible lessons from housing policy divergence and the analytical tools deployed in this paper.
Highlights
• Scotland and England deliver housing policy to support those seeking to live in affordable housing under significantly local policy discretion within the devolved UK.
• Both countries have pursued increasingly divergent approaches to expanding affordable housing supply. This paper contrasts and explores the two approaches, broadly since the economic crisis of 2008.
• Adopting a framework drawing on the ideas of policy failure and organized around the structure of a realistic evaluation, we find that Scotland’s programme with higher grant per unit has delivered more social housing and met more of its underlying housing need than was the case in England, which was more focused on lower subsidy and higher rent ‘affordable’ housing.
• There are wider political and contextual reasons that help explain this divergence in outcome and policy but also uncertainty about how affordable supply will develop in the future.
... In a housing sector functioning exactly like the ideal type of "needs-tested and market-based SRH", tenure security and affordability would presumably be very low: market-based rents would have displaced many tenants that did not qualify for selective economic support, and the ideal of temporary "ambulance service" SRH (Stephens, 2019) would be emphasized in municipal housing policy. As noted above, however, Norwegian SRH providers break with at least some of the theoretical precepts and the internal logic of the ideal type, for instance by upholding third-generation rent control, providing some tenants with longer leases, and renewing tenancies frequently. ...
In this article we introduce an ideal type we call "needs-tested and market-based social rented housing (SRH)" which is fleshed out and compared to the complex empirical reality of the Norwegian SRH sector. The ideal type may arguably serve as a useful theoretical point of reference both in case studies and in comparative research, and is inspired by the literature on housing regimes, pro-market housing policies, as well as the empirical example of Norwegian SRH. In our contribution to the special issue, we discuss how and to what degree the Norwegian case deviates from the defining features and internal logic of the ideal type, drawing on comprehensive empirical evidence. We also ponder to what extent the policy challenges plausibly associated with the ideal type are evident in Norwegian SRH. In our conclusion, we argue that, as expected, Norwegian SRH in urban areas matches well with the ideal type since it is highly needs-tested and directed at the most disadvantaged households for a limited period. Nonetheless, geographical variation, urban-rural differences, third-generation rent controls, institutional divergence, and discretionary exceptions mean that there is a far from perfect fit between empirical reality and theoretical ideal type. We also argue that many of the policy challenges plausibly associated with the ideal type, such as NIMBYism, housing shortages and complex needs assessments, are present in Norwegian SRH. Increased provision of social housing could probably mitigate at least some of the challenges discussed in the paper, or so we argue in our concluding reflections. However, significant state investment would require a major policy shift from the Norwegian government-a government that, despite access to black gold from the North Sea, has been reluctant to spend heavily in the SRH sector.
... I ask how these fifteen local governments prioritize between the needs of existing tenants and newcomers in the housing allocation, rental contracts and rent setting in the SRH-sector and argue that they conduct this balancing act through a variety of codified rules and discretionary practices. Moreover, even though SRH in Norway is almost an 'ambulance service' (Stephens, 2019) targeted at very disadvantaged households, the municipalities do not only favor the interests of outsiders by maximizing tenant-turnover rates, but also try to provide many insiders with affordable and secure long-term housing alternatives. This reflects that the middle-managers of SRH housing are forced to play the hand they have been dealt by their municipality and the national government, and thereby strive to optimize the use of limited SRH resources to make room for new entrants and provide stability for the most vulnerable insider-tenants at the same time. ...
In this paper, I ask how social housing providers in urban Norway balance between the needs of existing tenants (the insiders) and prospective residents (the outsiders). Based on qualitative interviews with social housing bureaucrats, I examine how the fifteen largest municipal social housing providers in Norway negotiate the trade-off between insiders and outsiders in housing allocation, rent setting and tenancy length decisions. While many of the institutional features of Norwegian social housing are designed to favour disadvantaged outsiders, this study suggests that openness to outsiders is counteracted by the protection of insider-tenants' residential stability through housing allowances, frequent tenancy renewals and discretionary exceptions. The paper concludes with reflections on social mechanisms that may influence the great social housing trade-off between insiders and outsiders. I argue that tenant-turnover strategies are blunted in contexts where insider-tenants are often no more privileged than outsiders, and that a 'virtue of necessity mechanism' may protect the residential stability of insiders in heavily targeted social housing.
... The policy proved extremely popular with voters and has never been fully repealed by successive governments of either party in England; although the Housing Act 2004 introduced stricter regulations, including a tighter time frame in which tenants could sell after purchase and with less discount to buy (King, 2006). The Scottish and Welsh governments have both recently ended it in a bid to protect social housing stock from further reductions, and to ensure that the state can provide safe, secure accommodation to those who are unable to buy or rent their own home (Stephens, 2019;Irving-Clarke & Henderson, 2021). ...
... The interweaving of 121 productive-protective logic is found in housing and other welfare regimes (He and 122 Chang, 2020). These findings echo the growing criticisms of welfare capitalism thesis 123 for abstracting the 'ideal welfare regimes' (Stephens et al., 2019). Arguably, the rise 124 of globalised knowledge-based economy has driven the state to appreciate the human 125 investment (productive) function of education welfare to consolidate the economic 126 competitiveness of countries by nurturing the local population to be competent labour. ...
This study investigates the emerging variegated school and education regimes (SERs) in urban China during the political–economic restructuring in the 2010s. Criticizing the existing literature for pursuing a national-scale, ideal and static embeddedness of SER in stylised territorial capitalism, this study develops an inter-scale analytical framework foregrounding urban political economy to link the SER restructuring, local socio-spatial transformation and changing political economy in the real world. This framework is based on variegated capitalism approach and multi-spatial meta-governance thesis with a focus on the extended and spatial function of SER at the urban scale. We substantiate the framework by investigating the three SERs in three Chinese cities. Attention is paid to how the municipality uses a specific SER to facilitate a specific local socio-spatial transformation, and how these actions stem from the new local entrepreneurial strategies that are induced by the changing national accumulation strategy. This study provides a new perspective to understand the recent and drastic socio-spatial transformation in Chinese cities, and shifts the research concern on the multilevel, variegated and dynamic embeddedness of SER restructuring in the geographical process of changing political economy.
... In dualist countries, subsidized housing functions as a 'safety net' (Boelhouwer, 2019;Lau & Murie, 2017;Stephens, 2019). State intervention is limited, often to the support of vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, in an attempt to balance adequate housing standards against minimum levels of disposable income (Blessing, 2016). ...
Comparative housing studies traditionally focus on housing systems and social or economic policy, only rarely considering design issues. Through an examination of subsidized housing and its design in 20 countries, this paper explores how design research can benefit cross-national housing studies. Subsidized housing is essential to delivering decent and affordable homes, underpinning the right to housing. To relate design dimensions to housing systems, the analytical focus is on regulatory instruments, technical standards, and socio-spatial practices as well as housing providers, tenures, and target groups. Design research benefits the contextualization of housing systems and design outcomes in several ways. It reveals the contextual and contingent nature of regulatory cultures and instruments, socio-technical norms and standards, and socio-cultural expectations and practices that shape housing solutions. The paper concludes by considering productive ways architectural design research might contribute to an interdisciplinary housing research agenda by offering new means of theorization and analysis beyond traditional housing system typologies.
... Joss [35] identified five critical junctures in smart city evolution and explored ongoing work and unresolved tensions. [36][37][38] determined the critical junctures associated with the housing policy evolution pathways. ...
Recent research has focused on developing new automated construction robots. However, the evolution pathways of robotics technologies and their specific applications are yet to be explored analytically. This study aimed to trace these evolution pathways using critical juncture timings to describe them. First, data were collected from the literature using a two-step literature selection method. Robotic technologies and application terms were then extracted and labelled using natural language processing techniques. Next, the probability of the selected terms was calculated as importance weighting. Finally, the critical junctures were identified by clustering the weightings using the k-means clustering algorithm. The proposed method revealed three critical junctures, thereby identifying four development stages since 1983. It was found that the needs for construction robots emerged after 2015. The robot configuration evolved from large-scale machinery to smaller and movable vehicles. Image-related sensor systems and processing algorithms, such as 3D cameras and deep learning algorithms, have become popular after 2009. These improvements allow for more accurate operation in unknown and complex environments. Inspection works may be the golden chance to further advance robot implementation.
... Por ejemplo, en España, las Comunidades Autónomas han utilizado sus poderes ejecutivos y legislativos para desarrollar diferentes modelos de provisión de bienestar en áreas como la sanidad, la educación y la atención a la dependencia (Gallego, 2016). En el Reino Unido, los gobiernos regionales de Escocia, Gales e Irlanda del Norte han aprovechado sus limitadas competencias para adaptar las reglas centrales en materia financiera así como los nuevos desarrollos normativos, dando lugar a diferentes regímenes regionales de vivienda social (Stephens, 2019). Thomson (2002) también ha mostrado las variaciones regionales en la prestación de servicios sociales en Rusia. ...
Aunque existe una creciente literatura sobre las dinámicas generales y los factores explicativos de los cambios en sistemas multinivel (Colino 2018; Dardanelli et al., 2019), carecemos de análisis sistemáticos sobre las tendencias y los determinantes de las reformas de la gobernanza territorial en el ámbito específico de las políticas sociales (López-Santana, 2015; Ter-lizzi, 2019). En este capítulo se revisa la literatura sobre el cambio de la gobernan-za territorial en los sistemas de protección social, tratando de conceptua-lizarlo. Además, como principal contribución, se revisa la literatura gene-ral sobre reforma territorial en federaciones y sistemas multinivel para especular sobre posibles factores explicativos del cambio en la gobernan-za territorial del bienestar, tema que ha sido poco atendido todavía por la investigación comparada. En la siguiente sección se discute qué entendemos por gobernanza territorial en las políticas sociales. El tercer apartado reflexiona sobre al-gunas de las dificultades para comprender el cambio en la gobernanza territorial del bienestar. En la cuarta sección, se exploran los factores que pueden desencadenar o ralentizar procesos de cambio en la gobernanza territorial del bienestar. Finalmente, se exponen algunas conclusiones y se apuntan futuras líneas de investigación
... As Lau and Murie (2017:273) note, '[e]xplanations for the resilience of public housing are unlikely to be informed by reference to countries where this tenure always played a minor part'. 2. Following the devolution Acts of the late 1990s, there has been a divergence in housing policy between the devolved regions in the UK (Stephens, 2019) and thus the focus of the article henceforth will primarily be England, unless stated otherwise. ...
This paper evaluates the resilience of social rental housing in the UK, Sweden and Denmark. Throughout the OECD, processes of retrenchment and privatization, alongside the growth of the owner-occupied and private rental sectors, have led to nigh universal declines in the size and scope of social rental housing.These processes have not transpired evenly, however. Embracing a historical institutionalist approach, alongside novel data and methodology, this paper assesses the variegated patterns of sectoral decline and resilience in these three northern European countries. We find the Danish, association-based model - with its polycentric governance and multi-level system of financing - to have been the most robustly resilient hitherto. In the UK and Sweden, we observe patterns of decline and evidence that the non-profit and needs-based principles which traditionally underpinned these systems have reached precarious thresholds. Nevertheless,despite manifold retrograde threats and vulnerabilities over the past decades, the social rental sectors in Sweden and the UK have proved surprisingly resilient.
... Meanwhile, loose monetary policy and unorthodox quantitative easing have been hallmarks of post-GFC policy, deliberately supporting asset prices. In what follows, the discussion relates to England only, due to growing divergence in housing policy within the UK (Stephens 2019). ...
This article critiques Kemeny’s theory of housing regimes to explain housing systems change. Power balances mediated through institutional structures are underlying causes of housing regimes in Kemeny’s schema in which the design of cost-rental sectors defines whole housing systems. However, the distinctive “unitary” systems Kemeny identified in Germany and Sweden are breaking down as economic failure prompted reforms to wider welfare systems, whilst mature cost-rental sectors were unable to maintain supply without subsidies. These mis-specifications in the theory have been exacerbated by the rise in unorthodox monetary policy. As poverty rates have risen, so the boundaries of possibility have shrunk, rendering “housing for all” approaches problematic and heralding more acute policy trade-offs. Nonetheless, policy choice and institutional differences counterbalance forces of convergence. Understanding system change requires theories of the middle range to be extended upwards to capture high-level forces of convergence and downwards to capture institutional detail that explains the difference.
... A decade later, these reasons continue to be persuasive, although I do agree that regional and local sub-systems can also be significant. The importance of political devolution to the UK's smaller nations is a case in point (although these are nations not regions), and I have argued that Scotland's social rented sector has moved more firmly into the "safety net" role when England's was shifting towards an "ambulance service" (Stephens 2019). But since the parameters of the "wider welfare regime" are still predominantly set by the UK government, the "boundaries of possibility" are limited. ...
In this article I respond to commentators’ observations relating to my Focus Article, “How housing systems are changing and why”, and propose a multi-layered housing regime framework. I argue that the institutions of housing system are naturally located in the middle-range, and fall into three distinct spheres of production, consumption and exchange. These spheres interaction with the “wider welfare regime” which represents the institutions of the labour market, taxation and social security. They have distinctive distributional tendencies and set the “boundaries of possibility” of the social rented sector’s role. Sitting above these middle-range institutions are macro-level drivers including macro-economic policy and the relatively new phenomenon of “really big finance” implied by unconventional monetary policies adopted by many central banks. Beneath the middle-range institutions lie regional and metropolitan markets where institutional variations and market pressures may produce intra-regime variation of outcomes.
... While some aspects of housing policy in the UK are devolved to regional governments, devolution has very limited relevance here [13] [14] [15]. In terms of policy, one key difference noted already is that Scottish local authorities pursued development of social housing in the postwar period to a much greater extent than those in the rest of the UK. ...
Over the last two decades, private renting has undergone a major revival in the UK, more than doubling its share within the housing system. Young adults increasingly remain in the sector into their 30s, giving rise to the term ‘Generation Rent’. Using data from the UK’s Family Resources Survey, this article shows how reliance on the sector varies by poverty status, particularly for young adults and children. In 2017/18, 42 per cent of adults under 40 in low-income poverty lived in private renting, compared with just 26 per cent of non-poor. This is almost double the proportion of 20 years earlier. Private renting is now home to more poor adults under 40 than owner occupation and social renting combined. In addition, one in three children in poverty (36 per cent) now lives in private renting, three times the level of 20 years ago. For both adults and children, rates are even higher in London and the South. Although rates of increase have slowed in recent years, this dramatic shift in the housing circumstances of those in poverty has a number of implications for housing and social policy which have not yet been sufficiently recognised.
... In the field of housing policy, the concept of multi-level welfare states is of relevance as well. Indeed, in various countries, such as the UK (Stephens, 2019), Germany (Haffner et al., 2009) and Spain (Dol et al., 2017), housing policies are mainly formulated, and often also funded, at the regional level and may differ significantly between countries (in the case of the UK) or regions (in the case of Germany and Spain) within a sovereign state. ...
International comparative housing research usually takes countries as a unit of analysis. Studies in the field typically connect housing outcomes at the national level to national welfare state and housing regimes. However, as a result of both supranational developments (globalization, financialization, neoliberalization, European Union integration) and intra-national developments (devolution of powers to regional and local entities, restructuring of national welfare states, rise of bottom-up collaborative movements), the influence of the national state clearly seems to eroding. In response to this trend, this paper explores a new form of international comparative housing research, in which not countries but (city) regions are the unit of analysis. Why do we need such a new form of comparative housing research? How can it be conceptualized? What are relevant research questions? What should we measure? The answers to these questions are formulated in the form of an agenda for further research and discussion.
This review paper advances a typology for research involving big data, highlighting a niche yet expanding scholarship on the provision and consumption of data infrastructure. By elucidating the epistemological underpinnings and analytical gaze of this strand of work, we conceptualise an outward‐looking approach to understanding data infrastructure. This perspective is vital in thinking through the materiality of big data and acknowledging the significant role that the practices of big data collection, storage, transfer, and computation play in (re)shaping spaces and places, thereby deepening our insights into sociospatial transformations. To demonstrate this approach, we used recent developments in the big data sector to elaborate on and discuss selected accounts of (a) uneven development, (b) geopolitics–economics nexus over city‐regional transformation, and (c) urban sociospatial restructuring and inequality. The discussion paves the way for scholarly contributions in the realm of geographical political economy and related fields.
Despite China’s high-profile community development agenda, how to provide neighborhood services, a key social infrastructure in community development, remains a challenge for many local governments facing fiscal austerity. This study addresses this lacuna by interrogating the boom of neighborhood center complexes (NCCs), i.e., building complexes accommodating multiple community services, in Chengdu, which has over 350 NCCs in operation or under construction. Drawing upon a six-year study and synthesis of mixed materials, we identified three salient modes of urban entrepreneurship strategies in developing NCCs: community elites’ entrepreneurship, state-owned enterprises, and public-private partnerships. Each mode represents a particular configuration of state power, market forces, and neighborhood participation distinguished from the conventional governmentfinanced mode. These three modes are not merely different urban entrepreneurship strategies but results of systematic reproductions of urban governance practices across different community contexts, featuring variegated urban entrepreneurship at the neighborhood level. Although temporally solving fiscal austerity in community service delivery, these urban entrepreneurship practices problematize community-oriented development regarding equality, effectiveness, and efficiency in service delivery and require further policy innovation. This study enriches the debates around urban entrepreneurialism by emphasizing a variegated perspective and suggests cautions when embracing market power in community development.
In this article, I discuss social housing tenants’ experiences of tenure security and freedom in a housing regime characterized by strong market-orientation and means-testing. Based on thematic analysis of qualitative interviews, I argue that some tenants experience social housing as a haven of stability, whereas others regard it as a source of insecurity that prevents the realization of real personal freedom. These divergent personal experiences reflect the ambiguity of social rental housing in Oslo, a form of housing that for all its market-orientation and means-testing still provides relatively stable long-term homes for many social tenants. By highlighting the link between security and freedom this paper contributes to ongoing theoretical debates in housing studies. The main argument of the paper is that there is a strong connection between dominant power of landlords in means-tested social housing, restricted tenure security, and the limited positive freedom of social housing tenants.
The housing regime in Oslo is one of the more means-tested and market-oriented in Europe. New social housing units are targeted at disadvantaged households, and sitting tenants are encouraged to leave social housing by the carrot of subsidized home ownership and the sticks of market-based rents and fixed-term tenancies. In this paper, I discuss the experiences of fifteen tenants residing within a regime, in which social rental housing is regarded as a temporary stopover for households that lack the economic, cultural, and social resources to compete in the private housing market. Based on thematic analysis of qualitative interviews, I argue that there are both notable differences and similarities in the experiences of tenants in terms of subjective perceptions of security and freedom in the housing market. Some tenants experience social housing in Oslo as a relatively secure safe haven, whereas others regard its market-based rents and fixed-term tenancies as a source of constant insecurity and a shaky foundation for real personal freedom and progress in other spheres of life. These variations in subjective experiences are arguably driven by variations in personal circumstances, psychological dispositions, and the divergent attitudes of street-level bureaucrats the tenants encounter. However, the differences in personal experiences also reflect the ambiguity and paradoxes of a housing regime that for all its market-orientation and means-testing, still provides a (relatively) affordable and stable home for many social housing tenants in a city with a lack of superior housing alternatives for low-income groups. By highlighting similarities and variations in personal experiences in a complex housing regime, the paper contributes to interlinked debates about security and freedom in housing studies.
Focusing on the highly ‘successful’ China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP), this study taps into a less explored topic of housing development in Special Economic Zones (SEZs) through the conceptual lenses of housing regime and enclave urbanism. Drawing on empirical evidence garnered from interviews, survey, observation, and secondary sources, this study transcends methodological nationalism and cityism to present a situated and close-up examination of housing regime at the intra-urban level. It also enriches the concept of enclave urbanism by delving into the nested enclave structure in SIP. A hybrid housing regime featuring a (neo)liberal logic in the disguise of the semi-social democratic regime for landless farmers and a productivist regime for the variegated workforce is identified. Two key players – the local state and transnational corporations, via formal and informal institutions, gave rise to a nested enclave structure. Instead of ‘a zone of exception’, SIP epitomises the ubiquitous neoliberalisation and aggravated precarity endured by low-skilled migrants, and foregrounds housing stratification and segregation within SEZs.
This paper makes a plea for a new form of international comparative housing research, in which not countries (national housing regimes) but cities or regions (local housing regimes) are the unit of analysis. Why do we need such a new comparative research approach? How can a local housing regime be conceptualised? By answering these questions, the paper attempts to lay the conceptual foundation for international comparative housing research 2.0.
Comparative housing scholars have, for many years now, imported typologies from non-housing spheres to explain housing phenomena. Notably, approaches attempting to account for divergent housing tenure patterns and trends have frequently been organized around typologies based on the assumption that a causal relationship exists between homeownership rates and the type of welfare regime or, more recently, the variety of residential capitalism a country exhibits. While these housing-welfare regime approaches have provided important research tools, we argue that the typologies they generate represent cross-sectional snapshots which offer little enduring cogency. Based on long-run data, we show that the postulated associations between homeownership, welfare and mortgage debt are historically contingent. This paper makes the case for employing historicized typologies, proposing a country-based typology linking historical housing finance system trajectories to urban form and tenure, with regional dimensions. We argue the need for typologies which can accommodate longitudinal, path-dependent dimensions, both within and between countries.
This paper asks two questions: first, how did the balance of decision-making between central and local government in welfare policy in England change between 2010 and 2015? Second, to what extent has that led to divergence in the extent and manner of such provision? It finds significant areas of policy where local flexibility has been increased (such as council tax benefit, crisis loans, and funding for specialist housing), either through a change in the tier of government responsible, or ‘unringfencing’ of grants allowing local authorities greater discretion in whether to deliver particular services, although in other important areas decisions on welfare remain firmly centralized. It also concludes that in areas where responsibility has been localized, divergence has been immediate and substantial. Localization may well reduce entitlements where local authorities enjoy a financial reward for so doing and political costs are low.
Recent legislation ending security of tenure for new council tenants in England may be considered emblematic of a US-style vision of social housing as a temporary welfare service, reserved only for the very poorest. But there is resistance amongst social landlords, many of whom remain committed to providing ‘homes for life’. Moreover, austerity-driven cuts mean that benefit-dependent households are increasingly refused social tenancies on grounds of affordability. The stage is therefore set for a battle over who and what English social housing is for. Drawing on large-scale qualitative research, this paper interrogates the implications of the mandatory extension of fixed-term tenancies (FTTs) by considering landlord and tenant experiences of the discretionary FTT regime in place since 2012. We conclude that the meagre likely benefits of FTTs, in terms of marginally increased tenancy turnover, are heavily outweighed by the detrimental impacts on tenants’ ontological security and landlords’ administrative burden.
Report examines the role of the social rented sector in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany and the UK. It includes institutions, allocations, and finance.
This article focuses on the welfare state, which includes social protection, health, education and training, housing, and social services, but can also be conceived more broadly to include policies that affect earnings capacity and the structure of the labour market. It discusses the difficulties of capturing the impact of the welfare state on income inequality, given that one does not observe what the distribution would be in the absence of the welfare state or specific aspects of it. Theories of welfare state redistribution are reviewed, and the conventional categorization into welfare 'regimes' discussed. The empirical evidence about the extent and nature of redistribution by the welfare state is described, including noncash services as well as cash transfers, and the impact on poverty in particular is discussed. Economic inequality is also strongly affected by the political process, and vice versa.
In this introduction to the special issue, we review the various debates spurred by Esping-Andersen’s The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Tracing its impact since the book’s publication in 1990, we show that Three Worlds continues to be the point of reference for comparative welfare state research. A content analysis of articles in the Journal of European Social Policy citing the book indicates that Three Worlds may even have obtained a paradigmatic status and that its claims and findings are often taken for granted rather than challenged. We conclude that Three Worlds has become a classic that is likely to continue to have a major influence on welfare state research in its next 25 years.
Research has shown that there is a strong negative relationship between social spending and poverty levels. Among urban inequality researchers it is often assumed that, compared with the USA, the welfare state has mitigated social differences explaining lower levels of urban inequality in most European countries. However, research on the role of the welfare state is often conducted on the national level, and is thus unable to draw conclusions on the effects of social spending and redistribution on a lower level, failing to take the within-country variation into account. This study connects welfare state research to urban inequality research by investigating the effects of social spending on poverty in urban and non-urban areas. We have conducted a cross-national multilevel logistic regression analysis using Eurostat and European Social Survey data of 2008. Our findings suggest that the effects of social spending are unequally distributed within countries.
Detailed examination of the territorial and governance dimensions of contemporary welfare reforms in the United States and Europe.
Until recently, studies of changes in the welfare state have tended to focus on transformations in the nature of social policies and their level of generosity. The New Governance of Welfare States in the United States and Europe concentrates on an often overlooked dimension: territorial and governance transformations. Employing detailed case studies and more than seventy-five interviews, Mariely López-Santana captures how a variety of postindustrial countries across both sides of the Atlantic have transformed the postwar organization of their labor market policy settings through decentralization, centralization, and delegation reforms. These changes have in turn changed the role of national and subnational levels of government, as well as nongovernmental actors, in the organization, management, and provision of labor market policies and services. López-Santana’s multidisciplinary, comparative, and multilevel approach to welfare state change is an original and important step forward in our understanding of welfare reforms enacted since the mid-1990s.
Table of Contents:
Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
1. Between Unity and Flexibility: An Introduction to the Institutional Reconfiguration of Active Welfare States in Europe and the United States
2. Activation and Its Implications: Situating the Project
3. Favoring Subnational Flexibility over Standardization: Extensive Decentralization in Italy and the United States
4. Balancing Subnational Flexibility and National Unity: Decentralization in Spain and the United Kingdom (with Milena Büchs)
5. Flexibility Within Centralization: The German Case (with Milena Büchs)
6. The Intergovernmental and Governance Reconfigurations of Active Welfare States: Summary and Implications
Notes
References
Index
Drawing on international comparative research, this paper examines recent policy moves to withdraw security of tenure in social housing in England and Australia. We contend that there are theoretical and empirical grounds for believing that tenure security is crucial both to social housing tenants themselves and to conceptualisations of the sector. Starting from this premise we analyse the underlying rationale(s) for phasing out open-ended social tenancies. First, we consider the ‘welfare dependency’ argument and the claim that ‘conditionality’ mechanisms will incentivise social renters to (re)engage with the labour market. Second, we interrogate the, arguably more influential, rationale which stresses equity considerations in ensuring that scarce social housing resources are targeted to those in greatest need. We conclude by reflecting on the implementation prospects for this high-level policy reform, arguing that individual social landlords' motivations will be crucial in shaping the practical impacts of the new regime.
Both Sweden and the Netherlands had housing systems that include broad models of municipal housing (Sweden) or social housing (Netherlands). These broad models, however, came under discussion due to the competition policy of the European Commission. Financial government support – state aid – for public or social housing is considered to create false competition with commercial landlords. The countries chose different ways out of this problem. The Netherlands choose to direct state aid to a specified target group and had to introduce income limits for dwellings owned by housing associations. Sweden instead chose to change the law regulating municipal housing companies and demands that these companies should act in a ‘businesslike way’ and with that aims to create a level playing field. This paper will describe why the two countries chose different options, the development during the first years, and also speculate about the consequences on the longer run and the future role of the public/social housing sector in housing and urban policy.
Esping-Andersen's theory and typology of the welfare state have been widely discussed in international comparative housing research. Most of the debate has been theoretical in nature; empirical applications of the theoretical framework are rare. We have therefore applied Esping-Andersen's typology to the housing system of the Netherlands. The results of this research project are described in this contribution.The paper starts with an outline of the theoretical background of the research project. There follows a description of Esping-Andersen's theory of the welfare state, with its typology of three welfare state regimes. This typology is reinterpreted for the field of housing. The resulting scheme of analysis shows how various welfare state regimes differ on some important housing system aspects. The scheme of analysis is applied to the housing system of the Netherlands. Several relevant aspects of this system, such as the organisation of housing provision, subsidisation, and rent regulation, are analysed. For each of these aspects, the welfare state regime with which it can be best linked is determined. Two epochs are analysed: the 1980s and the 1990s. Consequently, the development in time of the housing system in the Netherlands can be described.Some general conclusions are drawn concerning the applicability of Esping-Andersen's typology of welfare states to the field of housing. We propose a possible modification of this theoretical framework and outline some directions for future research.
The distinction between dual rental systems and unitary rental markets is refined and developed. In particular, unitary rental markets are defined as markets in which barriers to non-profit providers competing on the rental market are removed, reserving the term 'integrated rental markets' for markets in which non-profit providers are sufficiently developed to be able to compete without the need for invasive regulation. The study also develops the distinction made in previous work between markets in which non-profit providers influence, lead and dominate the market. Case studies are then presented: Switzerland, where non-profit renting is weakly influencing, Sweden where it is leading, and the Netherlands where it is dominating. It is concluded that while in both the Netherlands and Sweden there is evidence of continual deregulation consistent with a tendency from unitary to integrated markets, there is no evidence of consistent change in that direction and even signs of some retrograde changes.
Housing policy in Belgium and Flanders is directed mainly towards encouraging home ownership. Social housing in Flanders covers
a share of 5.6% of the housing stock. This social rental sector is characterized as a safety net by some housing researchers
and as a general model by others. During the 1990s and the first half of this decade social housing in Flanders became under
discussion. The image of social housing that dominated then was one of increasing problems with tenants and neighbourhoods.
Raising the income limits to get a better social mix was advocated by the sector and afterwards by policy as one of the solutions
for these problems, meanwhile also improving the revenues of the housing associations. The political discourse however was
very little supported by scientific knowledge. This contribution aims at clarifying the position of the Flemish social housing
by describing the historical and regulatory context and presenting the results of the Housing Survey 2005. It dispels the
misunderstanding that Flemish social housing is a residual model and explores different future models. One of the conclusions
is that solving problems of the social rental sector may not occur at the cost of those who need affordable housing most.
Nuance is not a virtue of good sociological theory. Although often demanded and superficially attractive, nuance inhibits the abstraction on which good theory depends. I describe three “nuance traps” common in sociology and show why they should be avoided on grounds of principle, aesthetics, and strategy. The argument is made without prejudice to the substantive heterogeneity of the discipline.
It's 50 years since the classic BBC drama on homelessness, Cathy Come Home, was first broadcast. Despite an immediate public outcry, another decade was to elapse before the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977 was passed in an attempt to provide permanent solutions for homeless families like those of the eponymous Cathy. Against the odds, this unique statutory safety net has subsequently survived almost 40 years of Conservative, Labour and Coalition governments. This policy review traces the history of the legislation, before considering current debates and future directions for this very British model. The main focus is on England, but attention is given to recent developments in Scotland and, especially, in Wales. We argue that it is high time to address the exclusion of single people from the main entitlements of the legislation in England, and to take account of the realities of the informal ‘preventative’ approaches that now shape local authority practice throughout the UK.
This article provides a critique of the use of Esping-Andersen and Kemeny’s typologies of welfare and housing regimes, both of which are often used as starting points for country selections in comparative housing research. We find that it is conceivable that housing systems may reflect the wider welfare system or diverge from it, so it is not possible to “read across” a housing system from Esping-Andersen’s welfare regimes. Moreover, both are dated and require revisiting to establish whether they still reflect reality. Of the two frameworks, Esping-Andersen’s use of the state-market-family triangle is more geographically mobile. Ultimately, housing systems are likely to be judged on the “housing outcomes” that they produce. However, it is suggested that current use of variables within EU-SILC in order to establish “housing outcomes” may be misleading since they do not reflect acceptable standards between countries with greatly differing general living standards and cultural norms. © 2016, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Institute of Sociology. All rights reserved.
Fighting poverty and promoting active inclusion is a major challenge for most European welfare states. This chapter argues that much current welfare research has focused on national policies and systems despite most anti-poverty strategies are put into practice at local level. The chapter explores the local welfare system approach and maintains that it is important to study the role public and civil society actors play, local strategies against poverty, what welfare governance arrangements prevail in contacts between them and how local welfare systems are connected to higher levels of steering and regulation. The chapter reviews existing research on welfare and social assistance regimes and presents five local case studies.
The UK has been engaged in an ongoing process of constitutional reform since the late 1990s, when devolved administrations were established in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. As devolution has evolved there has been a greater trend towards divergence in housing policy, which calls into question any notion of a ‘UK experience’. Whilst the 2014 Scottish independence referendum again returned constitutional reform high onto the political agenda, there still remain tensions between devolved governments and the UK Government in Westminster, with England increasingly becoming the outlier in policy terms. Informed by ideas of social constructionism, which emphasises the politics of housing, this paper draws on an analysis of policy narratives to highlight the need for greater geographical sensitivity. This requires not only more spatial nuance, but also a recognition that these differences are underpinned by divergent political narratives in different parts of the UK. This emphasis on the politics underpinning policy has relevance internationally in other geographical contexts.
There are currently two distinct and similarly sized types: social housing owned by local authorities, known as council housing; and housing owned and managed by housing associations. There are four distinct periods in the modern history of Scottish housing: pre-1919, the era of private landlords; 1919–1979, the shift to council housing as the dominant tenure; 1980–2010, the rise of homeownership and housing associations; and 2010 and beyond, the ascendancy of private housing, both owned and rented. This chapter provides an overview of governance and regulation of social housing in Scotland, before going on to consider both capital and revenue funding. The vast majority of the capital programme is spent on social housing. The Housing (Scotland) Act, 2001 reduced the size of right-to-buy discounts for new tenants, resulting in lower sales throughout the sector.
Social rented housing has played an important role in the United Kingdom for almost a century. From the introduction of central government subsidies in 1919 to the new Affordable Homes Programme, governments and landlords have faced trade-offs between the depth of subsidy and the scale of the new build programme; between rent levels and the quality and location of social housing; and between targeting housing on the poor and creating poverty neighbourhoods. These dilemmas are encountered in any country, but are played out through different institutional structures and within the wider context that includes demography, the labour market and wider economy, social security system and social attitudes.
Housing policy in Scotland is both distinctive and largely though not wholly devolved. Since 1999, housing has been at the core of divergent policymaking. In the recent referendum period, housing also featured indirectly in terms of the housing-related impacts of welfare reform such
as the bedroom tax. Consequently, the proposed changes devolving aspects of welfare and borrowing proposed by the Smith Commission also have ramifications for housing. However, continuing housing need in Scotland and the various challenges identified in this paper to achieving strategic policy
goals for the housing system mean that housing will remain a priority.
In the leftist Western political imagination, Sweden continues, for many, to represent a vision of a ‘better’, more egalitarian political-economic model than the neoliberal capitalism that has come to dominate the Anglo-American world in particular; and its housing system is widely regarded as an integral component of this alternative, social-democratic model. The present paper argues that this envisioning of the political economy of Swedish housing is thoroughly outdated. Yet it insists, equally, that the competing envisioning of Swedish housing advanced by prominent scholars within Sweden – of a radically (neo)liberalised domestic housing system – is not accurate either. Rather, Swedish housing in the early twenty-first century constitutes a complex hybrid of legacy regulated elements on the one hand and neoliberalised elements on the other. Recognising this hybridity is essential, the paper submits, to understanding the nature and source of the most pressing issues facing the Swedish housing sector today. The system's hybridity, moreover, is ‘monstrous’ – following Jane Jacobs's coining of the term – in the sense that those issues reveal the pivotal role currently played by the Swedish housing system in the creation, reproduction and intensification of socio-economic inequality.
The academic discipline of political science has a comparatively modest position in the field of housing studies. This article first confirms this by analysing the output of leading housing journals, measured in quantitative terms. Then five possible explanations to this situation are discussed. (1) Housing provision is implemented on the local level, while political science studies the national and international levels. (2) The central concepts of political science are not relevant to the study of housing issues. (3) Housing issues are not really political. (4) The central role of markets in housing provision makes political science irrelevant. (5) The economic incentives and institutional support for political scientists to study housing are insufficient. Some of these explanations are found to be groundless and others more plausible, but it is impossible to point out any single one of them as really conclusive. Finally it is discussed whether political scientists' low interest in housing issues is actually something to be deplored. It is claimed both that political theory could make important contributions to housing studies and, inversely, that theories of political science could be developed in interesting directions by being applied to the specific empirical context of housing.
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The British social rented sector has been characterised as operating like a socialist 'command' system. It places a much greater emphasis on housing very poor households than its counterparts in other European countries, most of it is still owned and managed by the (local) state and pricing policies are not sensitive to demand. Consequently, allocation decisions rely on bureaucratic processes. Some other European countries have more socially diverse social rented sectors and make much greater use of price signals. These systems have been characterised as 'social markets'. It has been suggested that Britain could adopt some of the organisational structures and practices used elsewhere and move away from the present 'command' system towards a 'social market'. Comparative evidence confirms that the British social rented sector does contain much greater concentrations of poor households and that this does not simply arise from the types of household housed in the sector. But further analysis of the distribution of income and work suggests that the divisions in the housing sector may primarily reflect these broader contextual divisions. Greater poverty and inequality imply a greater need for the housing system to provide a safety-net and make the introduction of market and quasi-market mechanisms problematic. This is illustrated with reference to allocations and pricing reforms currently under consideration. It is concluded that, given the socioeconomic context in which housing policy is formulated, it might be best to concentrate on providing an effective and high-quality safety-net.
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