Housing Studies Association annual conference

Description

Property-based welfare and vulnerability in the private rented sector (with Adriana Soaita, Beverley Searle and Tom Moore)

Abstract: this paper will argue that continuing neoliberal policies have structurally altered the links between housing and welfare. On the one hand these policies have underpinned a range of individual/family asset-based welfare strategies including those of buying to let. On the other hand, they resulted in an ever increasing demand for the private rental sector (PRS). Our analysis shows that the relationship between landlords’ and tenants’ relative economic ‘marginality’ and ‘affluence’ has created complex patterns of welfare and vulnerability across PRS which are permeated by insufficiently recognised generational, geographical and class inequalities. Double marginality – that is of both tenant’s and landlord’s – at the bottom end of PRS creates new housing vulnerabilities. It tends to reinforce the insecurity of tenure and lower housing quality given high risks of repossession and eviction, and a supply-demand based on low affordability. Conversely double affluence – that is of both tenant’s and landlord’s – at the top end of the PRS sustains a segment of real choice albeit for a few. Between these two extremes, the PRS may be seen as a particular field that intertwines diverse housing pathways with various strategies of property-based welfare in which new inequalities are generated by the claims of those ‘housing-rich’ over the ‘housing-have-not’.

Period	8 Apr 2015 → 10 Apr 2015
Event title	Housing Studies Association annual conference
Event type	Conference
Location	York, United KingdomShow on map