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Tag: social housing
‘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 as a Political Tool: Gender Inequality in Student Accommodation in Iran
This paper studies the gender inequalities in university-provided student accommodation in Babolsar, Iran, in relation to the role of the dominant political power and its approach in shaping the physical form of public dormitories and the living conditions of students. Secondary data analysis based on a questionnaire survey is utilised, and the results show that in numerous physical and non-physical ways women’s public dormitories are designed and controlled in favour of the dominant political power and against the wishes of their residents. This research examines how the ideological and cultural background permeates institutional practices in housing and affects the living conditions of a disadvantaged social group, which can open a discussion on the role of housing in social exclusion.
The Challenges of the Redevelopment of Old and Dilapidated Buildings in Mumbai: A Policy Perspective
Affordable housing is the biggest challenge being faced by the city of Mumbai, which styles itself as an emerging Global Financial Centre. The city has the image of being home to a stark dualism, with slums abutting modern skyscrapers. Over the years, adequate policy attention has been given to slums and with the implementation of the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme slum dwellers are being provided with housing in multi-storey buildings and are being granted tenancy rights to the dwellings. However, an emerging area of concern is the large housing stock that is non-slum but is old and dilapidated. The collapse of an old and dilapidated building in Dongri in July 2019 that killed twelve people and the one at Bhendi Bazaar in 2017 that killed thirty-three has brought this problem into the mainstream and new policies have been initiated to address the problem. Implementing these policies seems to be a challenge, and this is the result of different factors. This article looks at the housing problem in Mumbai from a policy perspective and analyses the implementation challenges of the new policy aimed at redeveloping the old and dilapidated housing stock.
How to Support Social Resilience in Tsunami-Devastated Communities: Iwanuma Case Study
This paper describes the post-disaster reconstruction in the Tohoku region after the 2011 earthquake. Nine years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami occurred, and many efforts have been made since to rebuild the devastated territories. Some Japanese architects and urban planners have seen the recovery as a window of opportunity to aim for more resilient cities. Nevertheless, building disaster-resilient communities remains a challenging task. This short paper presents the initiatives made to improve refugees’ social conditions in disaster-relief housing, using the case study of Iwanuma’s relocation project. Concluding remarks suggest that many efforts have been made to improve the social aspect of disaster-relief housing in Japan, for example through the development of community spaces or the pursuit of friendlier dwellings.
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.
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.
Incremental Change in Housing Regimes: Some Theoretical Propositions with Empirical Illustrations
The durable structures of housing and housing institutions are often subject to long-term processes of incremental change. Nevertheless, housing studies have largely focused either on static snapshots of policies or, more recently, on the inertia of institutional path dependence, while processes of incremental change have been almost entirely neglected. Political scientists (Streeck/Thelen/Mahoney) have proposed a typology of patterns of incremental institutional change, and this paper explores the applicability of this typology to housing structures and housing institutions. We draw on empirical illustrations from the housing literature to show how five types of change – layering, conversion, displacement, drift, exhaustion – apply to housing structures and institutions. We conclude with some general observations on how the typology can be used in further studies of developments in national housing regimes.
Classifying Housing Regimes. Is it Worth Doing? What are the Alternatives?
Comparative housing research is hindered by attempts to provide broad empirical categorisations of types of Housing Regimes and their equivalents and sweeping cross-country generalisations about their effects. Regime theory is right to recognise the housing provision is and can be organised in different ways but proselytises too strongly. Real issues and policy debates in countries are instead embedded in the existence of specific, tenure related, networks of housing provision and they widely differ across the world. Taking that on board can lead to more fruitful understandings.
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.
Financialised Privatisation, Affordable Housing and Institutional Investment: The Case of England
Historically, public and affordable housing has been provided by the state in close conjunction with local authorities, public housing developers, and other social housing providers. Yet, affordable rental homes are now increasingly being managed, produced, or acquired by private equity firms and other institutional investors. In this contribution, we argue that ‘financialised privatisation’ is a helpful concept for understanding these shifts in state-finance compromises within the post-crisis affordable housing sector. Drawing on the case of England, we first discuss the major mechanisms of financialised privatisation and examine how an increasingly polymorphous affordable housing sector has emerged with a focus on multi-tenure and mixed-income housing tenures. We then discuss the possible challenges of this transformation and conclude that it remains very much a question whether a privately funded housing system will emerge that provides genuinely affordable housing and reduces inequalities.
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.
The Financial Instability of Housing First Families in the City of Brno – the Risk of the Recurrence of Homelessness
This article presents the partial research findings on financial instability as a risk factor for the recurrence of homelessness among families enrolled in a Housing First project in the City of Brno (Czech Republic). The project represents an evidence-based social innovation focused on ending families’ homelessness. The research was designed as a Randomised Controlled Trial study accompanied by a qualitative evaluation. The data were collected through questionnaires, individual interviews, and focus groups. In the results section we follow the logic of a financial stability model and conclude that research results on financial stability overall did not prove to be statistically significant on a short-term scale. In the discussion, we state that prolonged material poverty combined with the nature of the Czech housing benefit system and the experience of residential alienation could increase the risk of the recurrence of homelessness for families. A crisis financial fund was established in an effort to prevent this.
The Dilemmas of Means-tested and Market-oriented Social Rental Housing: Municipal Housing in Norway 1945-2019
In this paper, I analyse the post-war development of social rental housing in Norway. During the 20th century, Norwegian municipalities created some of the more means-tested and market-oriented social housing sectors in Europe. Given developments in other countries in recent decades, the Norwegian case is therefore highly relevant to the general debate on the residualisation of social housing in Europe. Using the case of Oslo as the main point of departure, I discuss key challenges of residual and market-oriented social rental housing. Drawing on city council debates, local government reports, and previous studies, I argue that the logic of extreme means-testing creates policy dilemmas connected to contradictory policy goals.
‘They seemed like Super Businessmen’: Financial Instruments in Social Housing Policy
This article explores the trajectory of so-called guaranteed social housing in the Czech Republic as an example of penetrating financial instruments into the public policy realm. The project, promoted by the government’s Agency for Social Inclusion, was intended to encourage private landlords to rent their properties to people in need through commercial insurance against the risk of rent defaults. Using policy documents, media and interviews with governmental officers, the article describes the performative strength of financial instruments in the sphere traditionally occupied by the welfare state. In financialisation literature, the proliferation of financial instruments is often described as a one-way process in which these instruments colonise public domains. However, the empirical case discussed in the article shows that this process is much more complex and contingent, and financial instruments are not used as the best option but rather as a last resort in a situation marked by weak policies.
Delivering Social Housing: An Overview of the Housing Crisis in Dublin
This paper explores the responses to the housing crisis in Dublin, Ireland, by analysing recent housing policies promoted to prevent family homelessness. I argue that private rental market subsides have played an increasing role in the provision of social housing in Ireland. Instead of policies that facilitate the construction of affordable housing or the direct construction of social housing, current housing policies have addressed the social housing crisis by encouraging and relying excessively on the private market to deliver housing. The housing crisis has challenged governments to increase the social housing supply, but the implementation of a larger plan to deliver social housing has not been effective, as is evidenced by the rapid decline of both private and social housing supply and the increasing number of homeless people in Dublin.
Privileged but Challenged: The State of Social Housing in Austria in 2018
On the one hand, Austrian social housing is stronger than ever due to the growing importance that social rental apartments play on the housing market. The volume, price, and quality standards of this housing are competitive with what is found in other sectors of the market and the social housing sector also helped to mitigate the effects of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). On the other hand, pressure on the rental housing market has increased because demand for cheap housing has grown more than supply. The social housing sector thus has to address the vital question of how to increase targeting on low-income households and vulnerable groups and at the same time to maintain social mix and public support. In this paper I argue that the sector, in spite of its strong position, is facing some common European challenges that will redefine its role in the future. Yet, the social housing sector is overburdened if expected to solve many problems that have arisen due to non-housing issues.
Social Housing after the Global Financial Crisis: Further Evidence
Editorial.
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.
The French Social Housing Sector at the Crossroads of Budgetary Constraints and Social Missions
France has a high rate of production of new housing and the Global Financial Crisis has had little impact on a country of fixed-rate housing loans and strong guarantees for home-buyers. At the same time, the social rental sector, managed by a powerful network of public and private (not-for-profit) companies, has greatly increased its housing production thanks to the use of a financial mechanism that is independent of mainstream finance. Housing should be easily available throughout France. But this is not the case in the capital region and for some disadvantaged households. Critics regularly speak out against the deficiencies of French housing policies. Opponents of increased public spending consider that too much public money is being spent on this, while supporters of the free market say that the legal and institutional framework hinders private initiatives. Advocates of homeless people and low-income groups complain about the high cost of housing and segregation processes. This paper presents the debates and discussions regarding the pros and cons of housing policies in France at a time of severe budgetary constraints.