welfare policy
The Role of Mortgage Subsidies in the Croatian Economic Growth Strategy: a Political-Economy Approach to the SSK
Since 2017, Croatian housing policy has focused on promoting homeownership through the SSK programme – a form of mortgage subsidisation that covers a proportion of housing costs. Although this policy aimed to improve affordability and increase homeownership, a recent economic evaluation has shown that the SSK has in fact contributed to rising house prices and has been ineffective at raising the homeownership rate. While econometric research has identified the impact that the SSK has had on house price volatility and affordability, the underlying factors leading to the implementation of this subsidy, as well as its broader societal impacts, remain under-researched. Through a political-economy lens, this paper analyses the context that led to the inception of the SSK, its core targeting principles, and its impact on the housing market. We ask: How does this subsidy position the Croatian housing market within the national strategy for economic growth and social policy provision? We argue that this policy’s impact on housing markets is twofold. First, the SSK reinforces a shift towards financialised growth through increased asset prices. Second, this subsidy shifts the focus of social policy towards mortgage markets, thereby furthering the privatisation of the welfare state and favouring middle-income groups. This paper’s contribution resides in critically discussing the SSK beyond its stated goals and contextualising it within the broader model of economic growth dependent on private finance. Through interviews with relevant stakeholders, descriptive data indicators, and a review of policy documents, this paper characterises the Croatian growth strategy as a form of small-scale financialisation that relies on aligning social policy with mortgage markets. Finally, we position the SSK within a wider array of finance-led housing policies and suggest the formulation of a comprehensive housing strategy tailored to the broader segments of Croatian society.
‘The Social Managers Are Back in Town’: the Challenges of Housing Management in a Residualised Public Housing Sector
The residualisation of social housing sectors requires housing managers to intensify social management activities aimed at promoting tenants’ wellbeing and social cohesion. This paper discusses the implementation of such activities in the Italian public housing sector. It juxtaposes the vision conceptualised at the policy level with the daily activities of housing managers in practice on the ground and highlights the gaps between policy goals and realities of tenants’ involvement. While social management activities are expected to contribute to breaking the vicious circle of financial, technical, and social decline that has long affected public housing estates, the short timeframe of the planned interventions raises the question of the potential for structural change.
Housing Quantum and Innovative Building Systems in South Africa – the Affordability Perspective for 2020
The adoption of innovative building technologies (IBTs) and social welfare policies in South Africa has facilitated an increase in decent homeownership among low-income groups, thus improving their quality of life. However, due to the escalating costs of building materials, the capital and lifecycle costs of implementing these technologies may no longer be affordable. This research aims to provide a comparative evaluation of the affordability of some readily available IBTs in the South African construction industry, relative to existing homeownership subsidy grants. The method used involved the use of secondary data for these IBTs and the income constraint methods. The results showed that, apart from the technologies suitable for the provision of temporary structures, most of the other technologies were not affordable for the complete subsidisation of the top structure when both capital and lifecycle costs were used, except the Moladi and Robust structure IBTs under some low-income homeownership programmes. Further analysis using credit-linked subsidies revealed that the minimum household income required to achieve affordable homeownership (and their rankings) depends both on the evaluation technique (lifecycle or capital costs) and technology used. To improve affordability, any implementing government can either raise the amount of the top structure subsidy grant, promote the use of cheaper but durable IBTs, or promote the use in incremental building methods, such as the Enhanced People’s Housing Process (EPHP) for the case of South Africa.
Debt Relief or Exit: The Long-Term Effects of Forex Loans on Latvian Households
The stubborn decision of the Latvian government to join the eurozone at any cost put a great burden on Latvian households after the crisis of 2008. Nevertheless, no popular protest movement emerged to change the course of this decision. This study discusses why Latvians undertook individual strategies to cope with the forex loan crisis. Particularly, I look at the choice between formal debt relief procedures and emigration as alternative individual strategies for defaulted debtors. These programmes have not reversed the negative migration trends or significantly decreased the number of Latvian households in arrears. Debt discharge is mainly attainable for wealthy individuals who are able to mobilise their financial and kinship resources. Worse-off debtors cannot attain debt discharge or are stigmatised during the process. Alternatively, emigration has offered a way to cope with overindebtedness and keep up with mortgages and consumer loan payments for a much larger segment of the debtor population.
Welfare State and the Gender Dissimilarity Index in Homelessness. A Comparison of Norway, Belgium and Poland
This article investigates the structural underpinnings of gender dissimilarities in homelessness from a comparative perspective. The Gender Dissimilarity Index is introduced as a simple measure for quantifying the unevenness of the distribution of men and women across the ETHOS-light categories. Three gendered aspects of the welfare state are considered and compared for Norway, Belgium, and Poland: employment and childcare, housing, and homelessness policies. Based on available data, it appears that the most uneven distribution of genders may indicate a combination of the promotion of the male breadwinner model and relatively broad support for people who are homeless, but also the shortage of affordable housing. A more gender-balanced homeless population may be the result of a combination of housing-led approaches and degenderising policies. However, a similar distribution may be attributed to states with implicitly genderising policies coupled with ‘traditional’ attitudes towards gender roles and a lack of adequate responses to women’s needs.
Choice or No Choice? Genuine or Fake Choice? – A Qualitative Study for Reflecting on Housing Choice
This paper seeks to reflect on issues related to the nature of housing choice, drawing on qualitative empirical data collected in in-depth interviews. This paper discusses two perspectives related to housing choice, namely, the ‘market perspective of housing choice’ and the ‘perspective of housing choice for well-being’. The ‘market perspective of housing choice’ highlights that desirability generally increases with a greater range of housing choice as the housing supply increases till a climax is reached, after which a further expansion of housing choice may indicate an excess housing supply, which may not be advantageous and home-buyers may instead ‘decide not to choose or buy’. The ‘perspective of housing choice for well-being’ reveals that choice in the housing arena is often viewed as a means to eventual well-being, rather than as an end in itself. Housing choice is ‘genuine’ and ‘meaningful’ if there are meaningful and significant options among a few desirable housing alternatives. ‘Fake housing choice’ involves having to choose from among housing options that are all generally bad.
Introduction to the Special Issue: Varieties of Housing Regime Approaches
Editorial.
Rethinking the Concept of ‘Housing Regime’
‘Housing regime’ is a term that is used relatively often in (macrosocial) research comparing housing policies and systems. However, there is no generally accepted definition of this term. In this paper I shall first scrutinise previous uses of the concept, starting with a discussion of the most famous regime concept – the welfare regime. The discussion paves the way for a redefinition of a ‘housing regime’: the set of fundamental principles according to which housing provision operates in some defined area (municipality, region, state) at a particular point in time. Such principles are thought to be embodied in the institutional arrangements that relate to housing provision, in the political interventions that address housing issues, and as in the discourses through which housing issues are customarily understood. This definition is compatible with the path-dependence approach that has been adopted here and with the aspects of reality that researchers want to capture using the ‘regime’ concept.
Integrating Varieties of Capitalism, Welfare Regimes, and Housing at Multiple Levels and in the Long Run
The title conveys all the elements of this article. The typologies of capitalist economies, the typologies of welfare regimes, and the typologies of rental and owner-occupied housing regimes should be synchronised and combined, not selectively, but systematically. Integration will have to determine the multiple levels to which these typologies can be applied and on which they can interact. Owing to the persistence of housing institutions and buildings, a long-term (historical) view is also suggested – at all levels of analysis.
Subsidised Housing? The Paradoxical Imaginaries of Finnish Non-Profit Rental Housing
As a developed welfare state, Finland has a long history of and continuing political support for housing policies, ranging from non-profit rental housing to owner-occupied housing supported by tax deductions. The current neoliberal critique, however, has questioned the efficiency and moral foundations of the established policies. This critique has taken as its target the difference between market rents and non-profit rents, citing this as an instance of ‘alternative costs’ for the city and, as such, as a form of subsidy that is unjustly distributed. However, the full picture of different housing subsidies – including those received by owner-occupiers – is not usually considered. The paper concludes that the current debate does not take into account the ways in which different subsidies interact in the approaches used to provide affordable housing in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. As such the critique becomes tacitly political, although it is represented in terms of rationality and justice.
Financialisation, Home Equity, and Social Reproduction: Relational Pathways of Risk
This paper argues that financialisation exacerbates gender inequity in the United States. During the Recession, wealth-stripping activities targeted single female homeowners prompting severe asset depletion among single women, people of color, and those who depend on them. Rather than protecting them from risk, their home equity and bodies absorbed the failures of capitalism within their network. The paper draws on a thematic analysis of interviews with 21 single female homeowners who experienced mortgage default. Rather than focusing on risk incidence, I take their relational pathways as the object of inquiry demonstrating how activities of gendered care work act as conduits and amplifiers of financialised risk that extends the responsibility for unpaid social provision throughout the lifespan. The analysis demonstrates how their status as homeowners positioned them in between market failures and the consequences of austerity thereby restructuring the function of home equity.
Retrenchment and Social Housing: The Case of Finland
About 12 per cent of households in Finland live in social rental housing. The Finnish system of social housing is now facing challenges. Finland has reached a situation where large numbers of social rental dwellings are free from regulation because the state housing loans have been paid off, while new production of such housing is unable to make up for this loss. Potentially this means a decrease in the social rental housing stock. Current housing policy discourse sees social housing more as a failed policy than a necessary welfare measure. Such developments can be related to a larger change in the Finnish housing regime. It has entered a phase of retrenchment, where the government withdraws from its previous commitment to housing provision in order to give more room to market forces. Retrenchment has led to the strengthening of one of the basic features of Finnish housing policy, its selectiveness.
A Tale of two Busts (and a Boom): Irish Social Housing before and after the Global Financial Crisis
This article examines the marked decline in Irish social housing’s traditional role as the main source of accommodation for low-income households. We argue that although this policy redirection has become clearly apparent in the context of the Global Financial Crisis; its roots are, in fact, much older. They lie, not in Ireland’s most recent fiscal crisis, but in the last one which occurred between the late 1970s and mid-1980s. Changes made to arrangements for funding social housing during this time effected a long-term contraction in the social housing’s contribution to total housing output which, in turn, precipitated growing reliance on housing allowance subsidised private rented housing to accommodate this group. The post-GFC austerity merely accelerated this long-term trend rather than signalled a new policy direction.
Building Partnerships for Social Housing: Growing Housing Needs and Effective Solutions for Albanian Cities
Partnerships have a long history in European social housing with a mixed degree of success. They are an emerging model in post-socialist countries driven by budgetary constraints, rapid privatisation of public housing, and pragmatic efforts to respond to a complex housing affordability crisis. This article evaluates the challenges and opportunities of a new partnership model implemented in Albania to provide social rental housing. The project, launched in 2009, involves a legally defined partnership between central and local governments, the private sector, and an international financial institution. It has doubled the amount of municipal rental housing, addressing the needs of low- and mid-income households in Albania through the construction of 1,138 rental apartments for 4,300 people in eight cities. The allocation process, although politically charged, has been targeted. The partnership has capitalised on efficiencies, sound fiscal management, and cost and quality control. Despite some construction delays and potential concerns related to future sustainability, we argue that the partnership model is effective and has an important learning and innovation role for the future provision of social housing in Albania as well as in other post-socialist countries in South-East Europe facing similar challenges.
Social Housing in Europe: Legacies, New Trends and the Crisis
Crisis? What Crisis? Social Renting in Flanders (Belgium) beyond the Financial Crisis
In this paper we look at the position of social renting in Flanders after the GFC. It is argued that the GFC has hardly affected the production levels of social rental dwellings. On the contrary levels remain higher than before the GFC. Starting from that, we briefly illustrate what the current debates in social rental housing are.
Social Housing in Post-crisis Hungary: A Reshaping of the Housing Regime under ‘Unorthodox’ Economic and Social Policy
Moving to a New Housing Pattern? New Trends in Housing Supply and Demand in Times of Changing. The Portuguese Case
Monopolistic Competition and Price Discrimination as a Development Company Strategy in the Primary Housing Market
Firms operating in the property sector use information asymmetry and the local monopoly to differentiate prices of housing units. Selling similar housing to purchasers at various prices allows them to maximize profits. The aim of this article is to analyze empirically the behavior of developers, that shape the market situation. It is necessary to depart from the classical analysis of enterprises that operate in a free and competitive market and produce typical, homogeneous goods. We analyze firms that produce heterogeneous goods and make individual trans-actions with each client. We use the hedonic regression to compare the theoretical and empirical prices per sq. m. of dwelling in the primary market in Warsaw and find significant dispersions. The price discrimination strategy, can be one of the explanations of the observed high, upward elasticity of prices.
Urban Green Space in Transition: Historical parks and Soviet heritage in Arkhangelsk, Russia
Urban green space was largely underestimated as a potential for healthy and liveable environments in the state socialist countries. In Soviet Russia, green in the city was part of urban planning but more as a proclamation and mostly implemented in a top-down-manner. During postsocialist transformation, economic restructuring dwarfed the debate on urban nature and greening. Within last years, we see a change here: Urban nature for residential quality and well-being has become more relevant for people, their perceptions and daily practices. The paper analyses the development and main characteristics of urban green spaces in Arkhangelsk, Russia. It discusses the importance of urban nature for human well-being, housing and its contribution to social cohesion and local identity. The paper argues that urban greening is not only a planning tool to create liveable and healthy urban environments but also an important strategy in awareness raising and public involvement activities.
