Histories of social housing: a comparative approach

1
Histories of social housing a comparative
approach

• Peter Malpass,
• with Claire Levy-Vroelant, Christoph Reinprecht
  and Frank Wassenberg

2
Key questions

• how can history help to explain current
  differences (and similarities) between social
  housing systems in Europe?
• what can history tell us about the direction of
  travel in the future?

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Perspectives on the History of Social Housing

• Convergence structural determinism
• M Harloe, The Peoples Home?, 1995
• Divergence policy constructivism
• J Kemeny, From Public Housing to the Social
  Market, 1995

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Social structures of accumulation

• liberal capitalism came into crisis in early
  1930s
• welfare capitalism came into crisis in mid
  1970s
• post-industrialism, or post-Fordism

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Mass and residual models

• The mass model implies a better standard of
  provision embracing a range of lower- and
  middle-income groups, not just or even mainly the
  poor
• The residual model implies a focus on minimalist
  provision for the least well off as a safety net
  service.

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Harloes periodisation

• Before 1914, when social housing began in a
  number of European countries, primarily as a form
  of voluntary, philanthropic activity targeted on
  helping the least well off.
• The period immediately after 1918, during which,
  according to Harloes analysis, the mass model of
  social housing dominated for a short while during
  the postwar recovery.
• From the later 1920s to 1939, when the residual
  model was reasserted.
• 1945-mid-1970s, the period of postwar
  reconstruction, the golden age for social
  housing, when output levels were high and the
  mass model dominated, alongside attempts to
  tackle slum housing.
• Since the mid-1970s the mass model has been
  challenged and has retreated as residualism has
  advanced.

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• To understand the development of social housing
  in the six countries with which we have been
  concerned the USA, the UK, France, Germany,
  Denmark and the Netherlands, it was as important
  to identify and trace the significance of some
  general political and economic changes in all
  advanced capitalist societies as it was to grasp
  the nationally specific circumstances in which
  these changes were experienced and which shaped
  the responses to them (Harloe, 1995 528).

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Social housing since 1970s

• deep cuts in new investment
• moves to privatise sections of the stock and to
  narrow the socio-economic profile of those whom
  the sector accommodated
• policies of decentralisation and
• attempts by government to reduce its political
  and financial responsibility for the sector
• (Based on Harloe, 1995 498)

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Key features of Kemenys divergence approach

• Emphasis on underlying, categorical, differences,
  not superficial similarities
• Anglo-Saxon countries
• Continental European countries
• Main drivers are
• policy strategies and
• financial maturation

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Dual rental markets the Anglo-Saxon strategy

• Pursuit of separate and distinct policies on
  social and profit rental housing produces a
  residual social sector, and high demand for owner
  occupation
• Social renting complements and underpins the
  market, but does not compete with it

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European unitary rental markets

• governments have, in various ways, sought to
  minimise differences in rents, quality and social
  attractiveness between the social and private
  parts of the rental sector.
• cost rental housing competes with profit renting

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Drivers of divergence

• Policy strategies governments can choose to go
  one way or another in response to
• Financial maturation -
• the growing gap between the per-dwelling
  outstanding debt on existing stock and the
  average new debt per dwelling that is either
  built, acquired, or renovated (Kemeny, 1995
  41).

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History and the future

• Convergence theory suggests a general trend
  towards residualised social housing in a market
  dominated by owner occupation
• Divergence theory suggests that dual rental
  markets will go that way, but that unitary
  markets have the potential for cost renting to
  compete with both profit renting and owner
  occupation

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However

• Kemeny admits that even in unitary markets we may
  see, even in the medium term, rising owner
  occupation and apparently residualising social
  renting.
• But he argues it is necessary to look at the
  underlying reasons, not the superficial evidence

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Moreover

• The hegemonic position of market based unitary
  rental strategies in countries like Sweden, the
  Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland is much less
  strongly entrenched than the command economy
  model is in the English speaking countries
  (Kemeny, 1995 145).

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The transformation of social housing in the UK

• from growth to decline.
• from a broadly based tenure, accommodating a
  range of income groups, to an increasingly
  residual sector for the poor.
• from municipal housing to independent social
  landlords
• from local autonomy to increasing central
  government control of social landlords...

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More transitions

• From bricks and mortar subsidies to means
  tested assistance
• From part of the solution to part of the problem