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1. The Rise and Fall of Social Housing? Housing Decommodification in Long-Run Perspective

Author:
K.A. Kholodilin, Sebastian Kohl, and F. Mueller
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
The comparative study of housing decommodification lags behind classical welfare state research, while housing research itself is rich in homeownership studies but lacks comparative accounts of private and social rentals due to missing comparative data. Building on existing works and various primary sources, this study presents a new collection of up to forty-eight countries’ social housing shares in stock and new construction since the first housing laws around 1900. The interpolated benchmark time series generally describe the rise and fall of social housing across a residual, a socialist, and a Northern-European housing group. The decline was steeper than for the classical welfare state, but the degree of erosion was surprisingly small in some countries where public housing associations remained resilient. Within the broader housing welfare state, social housing correlates positively with rent regulation and allowances, but negatively with homeownership subsidies and liberal mortgage regulation. A multivariate analysis shows that social housing is rather explained by housing shortages and complementarities with rental and welfare policies than by typical welfare state theories (GDP, political parties). Generally, the paper shows that conventional housing typologies are difficult to defend over time and argues more generally for including housing decommodification in welfare state research.
Topic:
Welfare, Public Health, Housing, and Social Order
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Social Housing 2.0

Author:
Gianpaolo Baiocchi and H. Jacob Carlson
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Center on International Cooperation (CIC)
Abstract:
The global housing crisis shows few signs of letting up. This report from Gianpaolo Baiocchi (Director of the Urban Democracy Lab, Professor of Individualized Studies and Sociology at NYU) and H. Jacob Carlson (postdoctoral research associate at S4 at Brown University) argues that the solutions can be found in "social housing." This report makes the case that social housing is desirable, viable, and achievable. The intractability of the global housing crisis requires new thinking and action, even if it draws on lessons that are quite old. As housing costs continue to skyrocket, policymakers and social movements have an opportunity to set their communities on a new path—one that guarantees a fundamental right to housing.
Topic:
Inequality, Crisis Management, and Housing
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. The Rise and Fall of Social Housing? Housing Decommodification in Long-Run Perspective

Author:
Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Sebastian Kohl, and Sarah Hellmüller
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
The comparative study of housing decommodification lags behind classical welfare state research, while housing research itself is rich in homeownership studies but lacks comparative accounts of private and social rentals due to missing comparative data. Building on existing works and various primary sources, this study presents a new collection of up to forty-eight countries’ social housing shares in stock and new construction since the first housing laws around 1900. The interpolated benchmark time series generally describe the rise and fall of social housing across a residual, a socialist, and a Northern-European housing group. The decline was steeper than for the classical welfare state, but the degree of erosion was surprisingly small in some countries where public housing associations remained resilient. Within the broader housing welfare state, social housing correlates positively with rent regulation and allowances, but negatively with homeownership subsidies and liberal mortgage regulation. A multivariate analysis shows that social housing is rather explained by housing shortages and complementarities with rental and welfare policies than by typical welfare state theories (GDP, political parties). Generally, the paper shows that conventional housing typologies are difficult to defend over time and argues more generally for including housing decommodification in welfare state research.
Topic:
Public Policy, Housing, and Welfare State
Political Geography:
Europe and Global Focus

4. The Right to a Nationality and the Right to Adequate Housing An Analysis of the Intersection of Two Largely ‘Invisible’ Human Rights Violations

Author:
Benjamin Gronowski
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Statelessness & Citizenship Review
Institution:
Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness, Melbourne Law School
Abstract:
Millions of individuals around the world face challenges enjoying their right to a nationality, and millions more face challenges enjoying their right to adequate housing. While these human rights violations are recognised in general terms, little research has considered the extent to which these human rights abuses intersect as stateless persons face violations of specific socioeconomic rights, especially the right to adequate housing. This research attempts to fill that gap. This analysis explores the term adequate housing and the various legal instruments that enshrine this right, as well as the unique challenges faced by stateless persons in its enjoyment. This research argues that states have failed to respect, protect and fulfil the right to adequate housing for stateless persons in a number of contexts and that these failures are particularly acute for stateless persons with additional marginalised identities, which can then result in additional human rights violations. This analysis examines how previous policy solutions have failed to adequately consider the unique needs of inadequately housed stateless persons and calls attention to the need for more holistic and inclusive approaches to realise the right to adequate housing for all, which must include stateless persons.
Topic:
Human Rights, Housing, Stateless Population, and Nationality
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. The drivers of household indebtedness re-considered: an empirical evaluation of competing macroeconomic arguments on the determinants of household indebtedness in OECD countries

Author:
Glenn Lauren Moore and Engelbert Stockhammer
Publication Date:
02-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
Household debt is at a record high in most OECD countries and it played a crucial role in the recent financial crisis. Several arguments on the macroeconomic drivers of household debt have been put forward, and most have been empirically tested, albeit in isolation of each other. This paper empirically tests seven competing hypotheses on the macroeconomic determinants of household indebtedness together in one econometric study. Existing arguments suggest that residential house prices, upward movements in the prices of assets demanded by households, the income share of the top 1%, falling wages, the rolling back of the welfare state, the age structure of the population and the short-term interest rate drive household indebtedness. We formulate these arguments as hypotheses and test them for a panel of 13 OECD countries over the period 1993 - 2011 using error correction models. We also investigate whether effects differ in boom and bust phases of the debt and house price cycles. The results show that the most robust macroeconomic determinant of household debt is real residential house prices, and that the phase of the debt and house price cycles plays a role in household debt accumulation.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, Macroeconomics, Economic Cooperation, and Housing
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. On Historical Household Budgets

Author:
Brian A'Hearn, Nicola Amendola, and Giovanni Vecchi
Publication Date:
05-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
The paper argues that household budgets are the best starting point for investigating a number of big questions related to the evolution of the living standards during the last two-three centuries.
Topic:
Budget, Fiscal Policy, Homeownership, and Housing
Political Geography:
Global Focus

7. Breaking the Link Between Housing Cycles, Banking Crises, and Recession

Author:
Avinash Persaud
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
City Political Economy Research Centre (CITYPERC), University of London
Abstract:
The housing market lies at the center of the biggest banking crises across the world. The recessions that follow these banking crises are generally deeper and longer than others. The collapse of housing prices amid rising unemployment is a major source of inequality. This working paper explains how the nexus between housing, banking, and the economy can be broken. It shows that two modest regulatory changes would result in life insurers and pension funds providing mortgage finance, which would better insulate the economy and homeowners from the housing cycle than financing from banks or markets can.
Topic:
Global Recession, Inequality, Economy, Housing, and Banking
Political Geography:
Global Focus

8. Crisis? What Crisis? The World Bank and Housing Finance for the Poor

Author:
Elisa Van Waeyenberge
Publication Date:
07-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
This paper provides a critical assessment of the Bank’s housing policies, against the backdrop of far- reaching transformations of the financial sector across the world and a persistently dire shelter situation in developing countries. It situates the Bank’s housing stance historically since its initial involvement in the sector in the early 1970s. This allows to shed light on systemic and analytical tendencies bearing on Bank housing policy with significant implications for the Bank’s current policy stance, including its response (or lack thereof) to the dramatic experience with housing finance laid bare through the global financial and economic crisis.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Poverty, World Bank, Finance, Housing, and Economic Crisis
Political Geography:
Global Focus

9. Collateral Constraints and Macroeconomic Asymmetries

Author:
Luca Guerrieri and Matteo Iacoviello
Publication Date:
06-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Using Bayesian methods, we estimate a nonlinear general equilibrium model where occasionally binding collateral constraints on housing wealth drive an asymmetry in the link between housing prices and economic activity. The estimated model shows that, as collateral constraints became slack during the housing boom of 2001-2006, expanding housing wealth made a small contribution to consumption growth. By contrast, the housing collapse that followed tightened the constraints and sharply exacerbated the recession of 2007-2009. The empirical relevance of this asymmetry is corroborated by evidence from state- and MSA-level data.
Topic:
Economics, Global Recession, Economic Theory, Macroeconomics, and Housing
Political Geography:
Global Focus

10. Tools for Change: Applying United Nations standards to secure women’s housing, land, and property rights in the context of HIV

Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Open Society Foundations
Abstract:
Developed by the United Nations Development Programme and Open Society Foundations, Tools for Change is an easy-to-use resource for advocates working on women’s housing, land, and property rights in the context of HIV. It brings together relevant international human rights documents and highlights core concepts, rights, and means of enforcement, providing examples of successful advocacy from around the world. Moreover, it draws on the voices of women worldwide to explain these rights and their uses in practical terms. This manual was originally conceived during a strategic meeting on property and inheritance rights as they relate to HIV, held during the 2009 United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, where organizations gathered from around the world. It emerged from the realization that through hard work, advocates have managed to get a number of UN instruments to include protection for women’s housing, land, and property rights, and member states have pledged to abide by them. However, many advocates at the national level do not even know of these international instruments, even though they might be helpful in their work, particularly as governments may not be meeting their international human rights obligations. Advocates need a better understanding of international human rights and government obligations in order to ensure government accountability and advance women’s housing, land, and property rights. This manual seeks to empower advocates working in the context of HIV by making the relevant United Nations standards and interpretations clear and accessible—to make them "tools for change."
Topic:
HIV/AIDS, United Nations, Women, Land, Housing, and Equality
Political Geography:
Global Focus