Housing policy and social housing

Question 1

Social housing (definition)

Answer 1

housing that is usually owner and managed by government, non-profits who aim to provide affordable housing (Aalbers, 2012)

Question 2

Differences in the actors providing it across countries

Answer 2

State-based UK, Austria
Non-profit based - Netherlands
Private landlord based - Germany

Question 3

Evidence that it is different across countries

Answer 3

32% of overall housing stock in the Netherlands
18% in the UK
3% in Hungary. (Scanlon et al., 2015)

Question 4

Rationales for social housing

Answer 4

(Clapham, 2018)

• increase quantity and quality of housing
• evens out housebuilding cycles (market failure)
• affordable and secure home
• downward pressure on rents as providers have low-cost borrowing and economies of scale in construction

Question 5

Why is social housing policy heterogenous

Answer 5

its based on ideological preference

Anderson (1990) categorises housing policy systems by their ideological approach to welfare

Question 6

Various versions of social housing

Answer 6

Stephens, 2007

• ambulance service
• safety net
• wider affordability

Question 7

Convergence argument

Answer 7

Harloe (1995)
- Everyone affected by same economic forces especially in connected globalised world. So housing policy converges to reflect global affairs.

Question 8

Divergence in social housing policy

Answer 8

social housing is unlikely to convergence on the global scale because – even in the presence of major common forces of change (e.g. globalisation etc) – the provision of social housing is intricately linked to unique, country-specific characteristics

Question 9

4 factors that impact social housing policy

Answer 9

Politics, ideology, geography, and culture, etc (Doling, 2012)

Question 10

Evidence of divergence (US)

Answer 10

approach has a real problem of explaining the USA, where the mass model hardly made an appearance and where it is admitted that the residualised form has predominated almost throughout’ (Malpass, 2014)

Question 11

Other 3 divergence evidences

Answer 11

Critic have also invoked the experiences of Eastern Europe (Scanlon et al, 2015) and Asia (Chen et al, 2016), and continental Europe (Kemeny, 1995) as evidence that the purported pattern of social housing provision is not universal

Question 12

Groups of country ideology - two descriptions

Answer 12

Central to divergence approaches is the claim that there are different ‘families of nations’ (Castles, 1998) or different ‘worlds of welfare capitalism’ (Esping-Andersen, 1990) which reflect correlated groups of social housing provision

Question 13

Dual vs unitary

Answer 13

Dual rental market - US, Australia, Canada UK

small social housing, unregulated private sector

Unitary Rental Market: Austria Sweden, Netherlands

regulated private sector competes with social rented sector

Question 14

The three orthodox understandings of interventions in the housing market

Answer 14

Efficiency, Equity and Stability (Pawson et al, 2020)

Question 14

Pro-efficiency interventions

Answer 14

aim to maximise the functioning of competitive housing market - society net benefit (Le Grand et al, 2008)

Question 15

What inefficiencies exist in housing market - housing issues

Answer 15

high cost, long product life, slow supply adjustments, land value externality

bound to be suboptimal due to characteristics (Mackennon, 1991)

Question 16

What inefficiencies exist in housing market - Externalities

Answer 16

What you build, planning restrictions (views, pollution, green space)

Clapham, 2018 - countless interventions address market failures
- competition law of mortgages, tenant law, land taxes

Question 17

Equity reasons for intervention

Answer 17

Rawls (2001) - need to counter the inherent tendencies of markets to generate property wealth concentrations

Governments role is to help - ideology

Question 18

Is inequality bad for society? 3 things

Answer 18

Bad for social outcomes (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009)
Economic performance (IMF, 2014) Piketty, 2014
Public health (Marmot, 2015) —> rent burden correlated to mortality rate (Groetz et al, 2024)

Question 19

Does housing drive inequality

Answer 19

Key role in driving wider inequalities (Wiesel et al, 2018) - Australia

Question 20

Is equity and efficiency linked

Answer 20

Minimum housing standards in Australia (Pawson et al, 2020)

Help to buy in UK addresses inefficiency and equity

Question 21

Economic stability need for intervention

Answer 21

House price volatility, bubbles, threat to macroeconomy (Maclennan et al. 2019)
threat to banks (IMF, 2017)

US 2008 confirmed this - stemmed from US housing

Question 22

Housing and productivity

Answer 22

Maclennan, 2019 -housing stability linked to productivity

Question 23

Policy for housing market stability

Answer 23

Interest rates ,controls on bank lending, foreign investor rules

Question 24

Is stability the same as market failure

Answer 24

Pawson et al (2020) argues this is a subset of the market failure but seem to rest on a slightly separate justification

Question 25

Pawson et al 2020 other classifications

Answer 25

party ideology, lobby forces and political economy perspective

Question 26

Neoliberal economic approach

Answer 26

Focus on market failure and economy

Question 27

Equity intervention considered (neoliberally)

Answer 27

intruder in autonomous housing market (Madden & Marcuse, 2016)