Delft University of Technology
A Review of "Housing wealth and welfare", By Caroline Dewilde and Richard Ronald
Elsinga, Marja DOI 10.1080/19491247.2017.1411646 Publication date 2018 Document Version Final published version Published in
International Journal of Housing Policy
Citation (APA)
Elsinga, M. (2018). A Review of "Housing wealth and welfare", By Caroline Dewilde and Richard Ronald. International Journal of Housing Policy, 18(2), 346-353. https://doi.org/10.1080/19491247.2017.1411646 Important note
To cite this publication, please use the final published version (if applicable). Please check the document version above.
Copyright
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons. Takedown policy
Please contact us and provide details if you believe this document breaches copyrights. We will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
This work is downloaded from Delft University of Technology.
Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository
'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project
https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care
Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher
is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the
Dutch legislation to make this work public.
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=reuj20
International Journal of Housing Policy
ISSN: 1949-1247 (Print) 1949-1255 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/reuj20
A Review of "Housing wealth and welfare", By
Caroline Dewilde and Richard Ronald
Marja Elsinga
To cite this article: Marja Elsinga (2018) A Review of "Housing wealth and welfare", By Caroline Dewilde and Richard Ronald, International Journal of Housing Policy, 18:2, 346-348, DOI: 10.1080/19491247.2017.1411646
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19491247.2017.1411646
Published online: 19 Dec 2017.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 88
View related articles
BOOK REVIEWS
Housing wealth and welfare, By Caroline Dewilde and Richard Ronald, Chelten-ham, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017, ISBN 978 78536 095 4
This is a very interesting edited volume comprising an introduction chapter reflect-ing on so-called housreflect-ing asset-based welfare and nine chapters written by a nice selection of authors. It is a more than worthwhile joint effort of two excellent ERC laurates who have both been working on the topic for years which is demonstrated in the very comprehensive overview of the state of the art in housing wealth and welfare. They explain different models across time and across Europe: some models are more familialised, relying on family capital, while others are more financialised, relying on mortgages. The introduction is followed by a multi-angle, multi-country collection of well-written chapters. And last but not least, there is an epilogue by John Doling, ‘the father’ of housing asset-based welfare.
The first part of the book focuses on old and new conceptualisations of housing and welfare. This part starts with a chapter on Ireland written by Norris. Using a historical perspective, she demonstrates that policies aimed at helping people to become home-owners can be considered as social policies. This very interesting case also demonstrates how social policy turned into a Celtic tiger and how this all ended in a Celtic disaster, illustrated by the extensive housing crisis in Ireland. This case clearly demonstrated the risks of using housing as a social policy. Chapter 3 is a comparative one on Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Bengtsson, Ruonavaara, and Sorvoll demonstrate that these countries might be rather different in their housing systems at first sight; however, the developments around home-ownership in the past neoliberal decades are quite similar. Chapter 4 puts housing wealth in an inter-generational perspective. Searl and Koppe come up with an interesting new frame-work called gAMUT (Acquiring, Managing, Using, and Transferring) to analyse housing wealth over the life-course. In chapter 5, Lennartz puts housing wealth in the perspective of the social investment strategy. This chapter shows the variety of social policies within Europe. In the North-West European countries, social policy moved towards employment maximisation and capital accumulation, while most southern and eastern European countries continue to focus on protection and strati-fication of income.
The second part of the book focuses on institutional variations of the relation-ship between housing, welfare provision, and inequality. Chapter 6 on Northern Ire-land puts housing wealth in the perspective of the financial crisis. Wallace explores the successful resilience of low-income home-owners during the economic down-turn. An explanation for this might be the fact that Northern Ireland is less
International Journal of Housing Policy, 2018 Vol. 18, No. 2, 346–353
financialised compared to many other countries. In chapter 7, Kolb and Buchholz study the relation between home-ownership and social inequalities in Germany and distinguish between the East and the West. They conclude that the home-ownership rate in West Germany is still higher than in the East, but that in both parts housing market inequalities exacerbate labour market inequalities. Chapter 8 goes further East and brings us to another interesting comparison; between East European and South European countries. Mandic and Mrzel nicely describe the growing signifi-cance of the informal sector, the family and kinship networks, and demonstrate that eastern and southern European countries differ from the conservative and social democratic welfare regimes in their attitudes towards care, but conclude that there is no significant difference between these two groups. Chapter 9 focusses on the issue of property rights in Russia. Zavisca and Gerber argue that property rights in Russia often are not clear, stating that there is more co-ownership and co-equity building in Russia than ‘traditional’ home-ownership. Moreover, even when the property rights are clear, one could wonder to what extent the often outdated prop-erties can be considered a home. The final chapter is on family-based home-owner-ship in Romania. Soaita presents a nice classification of the use of housing assets: passively (imputed rent, mobilised reactively: sharing, overcrowding), proactively (letting, lodging), or strategically (upsizing; downsizing, self-building). Interest-ingly, housing wealth that can be cashed by a financial product is not mentioned here, probably because it is non-existent in Romania which fits within the family model.
The chapters on Ireland and Romania report a very long history of home-owner-ship policies in rural areas. Processes of urbanisation and later financialisation, as described in several of the chapters, have led to changes in housing wealth. There was a general trend from mainly detached and family supported home-ownership to more collective ownership and more mortgage debts (see also Donoso & Elsinga, 2017). Currently, we also observe more reliance on family support (see also Deng, Hoekstra, & Elsinga,2016) and increasing awareness of the risks of home owner-ship (see Teye, de Haan, Elsinga, Bondinuba, & Gbadegesin,2017). This change also affected the relation between housing wealth, social policy, and political ideol-ogy. Whereas supporting low-income home-ownership reminds of the conservative rhetoric of Prime Minister Thatcher introducing the Right to Buy in 1980, in the epilogue, John Doling reflects on the Irish case and suggests this could be consid-ered socialist as home-ownership is part of the assurance of people’s welfare. The connection between housing wealth and welfare appears multidimensional and not simple (Teye et al.,2017), so what conclusion can be drawn? John Doling ends by saying ‘the future may not be simply more of the same.’ As often, I think John Dol-ing found the right level of abstraction here!
I recommend scholars in the fields of social policy, political science, sociology, and geography to thoroughly study this book which provides a very good state of the art of housing asset-based welfare and an interesting collection of chapters International Journal of Housing Policy 347
explaining how housing, social policy, and financial markets interact. It unravels the underlying mechanisms and although it is not clear from the book what the future will look like, it contributes to our understanding of current developments and emerging new directions.
References
Donoso, R., & Elsinga, M. (2017). Management of low-income condominiums in Bogota and Quito: The balance between property law and self-organisation. International Journal of Housing Policy. Advance online publication. doi:10.1080/14616718.2016.1248608 Deng, W., Hoekstra, J., & Elsinga, M. (2016). Homeownership determinants of young people
in Post-socialist China and the implications for social stratification. International Journal of Housing policy, 16 (2), 201–222.
Teye, A.L., de Haan, J., Elsinga, M.G., Bondinuba, F.K., & Gbadegesin, J.T. (2017). Risks in homeownership: A perspective on the Netherlands. International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis, 10, 472–488.
Marja Elsinga Department OTB Research for the Built Environment, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands Email:M.G.Elsinga@tudelft.nl Ó 2017, Marja Elsinga https://doi.org/10.1080/19491247.2017.1411646
The Right to Buy: selling off public and social housing, By Alan Murie, Bristol, Policy Press, 2016, ISBN 978-1447332077
The Right to Buy (RTB) legislation, introduced by the UK Conservative adminis-tration in 1980, offered large discounts to entice sitting council tenants to purchase their home. For its advocates, RTB was heralded as an innovative housing policy that would eventuate in the UK becoming a property-owning democracy. Whilst those council tenants who were able to purchase their homes at below market prices may have personally benefited, the legacy of RTB policy has been nothing short of disastrous. Alan Murie’s book explains the reasons why.
Murie views the RTB in the context of the long duree of post-war UK housing policy and argues that it ended the consensus amongst Conservative and Labour politicians to commit funds to local authorities to build new council housing. The book is structured in the following way. The introduction establishes the context and the approach adopted, Chapters 2 and 3 provide details of the origins of the RTB policy and its implementation. Chapter 4 provides data and a commentary to 348 Book Reviews