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Varieties of Housing Regime Approaches

Introduction to the Special Issue: Varieties of Housing Regime Approaches

Editorial.

8.6.2020 | József Hegedüs | Volume: 7 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 1-4 | 10.13060/23362839.2020.7.1.498
Varieties of Housing Regime Approaches

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.

7.6.2020 | Hannu Ruonavaara | Volume: 7 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 5-14 | 10.13060/23362839.2020.7.1.499
Varieties of Housing Regime Approaches

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.

6.6.2020 | Bo Bengtsson, Sebastian Kohl | Volume: 7 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 15-24 | 10.13060/23362839.2020.7.1.500
Varieties of Housing Regime Approaches

Using Path Dependence Theory to Explain Housing Regime Change: The Traps of Super-Homeownership

The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of path dependence theory to explain the convergence of housing regimes among post-socialist countries, both at the beginning and in the later phases of housing-regime transformation. We especially seek to show the selected common traps that were recently created by the legacy of giveaway privatisation and the super-homeownership regime, traps that increase intergenerational inequality, which to now has been effectively mitigated by within-family financial transfers.

5.6.2020 | Martin Lux, Petr Sunega | Volume: 7 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 25-35 | 10.13060/23362839.2020.7.1.501
Varieties of Housing Regime Approaches

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.

4.6.2020 | Michael Ball | Volume: 7 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 36-48 | 10.13060/23362839.2020.7.1.502
Varieties of Housing Regime Approaches

Understanding Housing Development in New European Member States - a Housing Regime Approach

The paper will address the development of housing regimes in the new EU member states,introducing the analytical framework of a housing sector matrix to classifyforms of housing by tenure andintegration mechanism. Thus, ourhousing sector matrixcombines two common approaches: thestructure of housing provision (Ball and Harloe 1992) and the tenure-focused approach (Kemeny 1981, 1995). Starting from this rough typology of housing provisions, we also take further factors that have a major impact on the behaviour of stakeholders/actors into consideration, namely the legal/regulatory environment and the subsidy/tax system, to define the housing regimes. In its analysing of the development of the new member states the paperdifferentiates between global factors (economic development model, countries’ position in global economic structures, etc.) and local factors like the political/power structure, mainstream social ideology, the interplay betweendifferent stakeholders, etc. Institutional analyses (Bengtsson and Ruonavaara 2010) that take path-dependent factors into account are thus best able to address the process by which new housing regimes emerged in post-socialist countries and the degree to which we find convergence/divergence trends. The paper analyses three junctures in the development process after 1990: radical changes after the collapse of the old system; the development of the mortgage market and the regulation of the social sector at the turn of 2000; and reactions to the financial crisis of 2008. The paper concludes that the new member states are following the same trajectory despite their institutional differences.

3.6.2020 | József Hegedüs | Volume: 7 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 49-62 | 10.13060/23362839.2020.7.1.503
Varieties of Housing Regime Approaches

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.

2.6.2020 | Walter Matznetter | Volume: 7 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 63-73 | 10.13060/23362839.2020.7.1.504
Varieties of Housing Regime Approaches

Comparing Local Instead of National Housing Regimes? Towards International Comparative Housing Research 2.0.

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.

1.6.2020 | Joris Hoekstra | Volume: 7 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 74-85 | 10.13060/23362839.2020.7.1.505

Exploring Young Europeans’ Homeownership Opportunities

Even before the 2008/9-crisis but certainly afterwards, trends in labour, housing and mortgage markets combined with welfare reform, making it more difficult for each new cohort of young Europeans (25-34) to complete the transition to ‘residential independence’, particularly to become a homeowner. This paper explores ‘trends in homeownership opportunities’, using data from EU-SILC (2005-2018). It takes a broader perspective by exploring trends in its social selectivity, as well as changes in the ‘attributes’ of homeownership over time. Young adults’ homeownership opportunities have declined almost everywhere in Europe, but to varying extents. Furthermore, a more socially selective group of young homeowners seems to be entering properties of lower quality in locations with fewer services. Deteriorating homeownership opportunities are strongly associated with mortgage lending restrictions, indicating that trends in housing and broader financial markets/policies are important explanatory factors. I also find indications that the transition to homeownership is being pushed beyond the commonly-used age-threshold of 34 years.

31.5.2020 | Caroline Dewilde | Volume: 7 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 86-102 | 10.13060/23362839.2020.7.1.506

Towards a Political Economy of the Private Rental Sector

This article sets out a theoretical framework for the political economy of the private rental sector, with a particular focus on the question of inequality. It brings together three existing bodies of research. First, macro-accounts of social stratification and wealth inequality. Second, Marxian critiques of the antagonism between accumulation and social reproduction. Third, qualitative accounts of tenants’ experiences of housing inequality. The article synthesizes these three literatures to put forward a political economy approach which can capture the multi-dimensional and multi-scale nature of both ‘housing’ and ‘home’ in the private rental sector. In so doing, it contributes to recent research on ‘generation rent’, in particular the related class and generational inequalities, as well as wider debates on the political economy of housing.

30.5.2020 | Michael Byrne | Volume: 7 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 103-113 | 10.13060/23362839.2020.7.1.507

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.

29.5.2020 | Gertjan Wijburg, Richard Waldron | Volume: 7 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 114-129 | 10.13060/23362839.2020.7.1.508

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.

28.5.2020 | Johanna Lilius, Kimmo Lapintie | Volume: 7 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 130-139 | 10.13060/23362839.2020.7.1.509