The Party’s Over (For a Second Time)? Critical Junctures,

Financial Crises and the Politics of Housing Policy

Tony Manzi and Keith Jacobs

Introduction

• Critical junctures – path dependency and punctuated equilibrium

• The longue duree of neoliberalism• The politics of housing – contrasting periods

– Mid 1970s – revisionism and reluctant acceptance of public expenditure cuts

– Post 2008 – ideological commitment to neoliberalism

The longue duree of neoliberalism

• Shrinking the State• Reducing public expenditure• Accelerating process of ‘risk privatisation’

(Hacker, 2004)• Restructuring welfare

Neoliberalism… proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices…State interventions in markets (once created) must be kept to a bare minimum because, according to the theory, the state cannot possibly possess enough information to second-guess market signals (prices) and because powerful interest groups will inevitably distort and bias state interventions (particularly in democracies) for their own benefit (Harvey, 2005:2).

Defining neoliberalism

Components of neoliberalism (Self, 2000:159)

• Economic – markets as most rational means of resource allocation

• Social – markets underpin individualism defining rights, responsibilities and opportunities

• Political – state provides framework for market operations, confined to limited functions – e.g. law, defence, policing

Forms of retrenchment:Hacker (2004)

• Drift – transformation due to shifting social conditions

• Conversion – internal adaptation of existing policy

• Layering – creating new policy without eliminating old

• Revision – formal reform, replacement or elimination of existing policy

Crosland and The Future of Socialism (1956)

• Protest against poverty• Concern for social welfare and interests of

disadvantaged• Belief in equality and the classless society• Support for cooperation and fraternity over

competition and self interest• Protest against capitalism’s tendency towards

mass unemployment

Crosland and housing

• ‘Private enterprise will never solve the problem’ (1962, p.46)• Reject ‘the philosophy… that some people “should” be council tenants and

others owner occupiers, that council houses are only for certain categories of person and not for others’ (1974a, p.123)

• ‘The council tenant is an underprivileged citizen…but much of it stems from a pervasive feeling, insidiously fostered by the present Government, that council housing is meant only for poorer people’ (1974b, p.129) (emphasis in original).

• ‘Local authorities ‘are not in the business of rented accommodation solely to provide a welfare service for the poor’ (1974c, p.137)

• ‘Private landlordism is not an appropriate form of house-ownership in an advanced society. The relationship between landlord and tenant is too unequal; and the landlord wields a degree of power which is unacceptable in a democratic society’ (1974b, p.130)

MALPASS AND ROWLANDS (2010: 2)

The 1970s saw the weakening or abandonment of assumptions previously taken for granted and marked the boundary between postwar housing policy and the emergence of a period of privatisation and deregulation…leading to the establishment of a new orthodoxy by the end of the twentieth century

1970s as critical juncture(Malpass and Rowlands, 2010)

• Fiscal crisis of the state – dominance of housing finance

• Post-industrial, post-Fordist, post-welfare – assumption that no longer crude shortage

• Retreat from high point of collectivist welfare – owner occupation as dominant tenure

• Housing in forefront of change - ‘wobbly pillar’ of the welfare state

Drift, Conversion and Layering

• Reduction of stock as result of sales overtaking new provision

• Changing social composition of tenants – increasing proportions of poor and marginal

• Policy changes designed to make social renting more marginal – safety net for those who cannot gain access to market

Crosland and financial crisis

• For the next few years times will not be normal. Perhaps people have used the words “economic crisis” too often in the past. They have shouted “wolf, wolf” when the animal was more akin to a rather disagreeable Yorkshire terrier. But not now. The crisis that faces us is infinitely more serious than any of the crises we have faced over the past 20 years…With its usual spirit of patriotism and its tradition of service to the community’s needs, it is coming to realise that, for the time being at least, the party is over…We are not calling for a headlong retreat. But we are calling for a standstill (Crosland, May 1975).

Council Housing Decline and Housing Association Growth, England, 1981-2006 (000s)

1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 20110

1,000

2,000

3,000

4,000

5,000

6,000

Local authorityHousing association

Retrenchment - the changing discourse of social housing

• ‘Local authorities were no longer to be regarded as contributing to the solution to housing problems – they had become part of the problem. Henceforth housing was to be treated as a commodity and policy was to be framed accordingly’ (Malpass, 2005, p.210)

• Hostility to local government as bureaucratic, inefficient and self-serving

Retrenchment in housing

• Owner occupation in modern era associated with risk and inequality

• Market as antithesis of egalitarianism and collectivism of postwar welfare state (Malpass,2005, p.162)

• Social housing reconstituted as site of social exclusion (Malpass, 2005, p.167)

Welfare Restructuring

• Reducing the structural deficit• Localism• Modernising the welfare state

– Conditionality– Benefit caps

• The end of the local authority landlord– Abolition of security of tenure– Affordable rents– Bedroom tax

Housing and neoliberalism post 2008

• ‘It was more government that got us into this mess’ (Cameron, 2009)

• ‘Social housing has come to reinforce inequality and social division in society’ (CSJ, 2008:7)

• ‘The main problem with the current system of social housing is its inflexibility’ (Boles, 2010:72).

• Perception as ‘place of intergenerational worklessness, hopelessness and dependency’ (Duncan Smith, 2011)

Conclusions

• Retrenchment of welfare• The failures of government• The marginalisation of housing• Dependency, morality and the changing role

of the State• The future of comparative studies

References• Cole, I. (2008) ‘What future for social housing in England?’, People, Place and Policy

Online, vol.1, issue1, pp.3-13• Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) (2008) Housing Poverty: From Social Breakdown to

Social Mobility London CSJ• Crosland, A. (1962) The Conservative Enemy: A Programme of Radical Reform for

the 1960s Guildford and London: Billing and Sons • Crosland, A. (1974a) ‘Twelve points for a Labour housing policy’ in Socialism Now

[originally published in The Guardian, December 15th, 1971}, London: Jonathan Cape, pp.119-123

• Crosland, A. (1974b) ‘A new deal for council tenants’ in Socialism Now [originally published in The Guardian, June 16th, 1971}, London: Jonathan Cape, pp.129-133

• Crosland, A. (1974c) ‘The case for municipalization’ in Socialism Now [originally published in The Guardian, November 2nd, 1972}, London: Jonathan Cape, pp.134-138

• Crosland, A. (1974d) ‘Housing; a summing up’ in Socialism Now [originally published in The Guardian, May 2nd and 3rd, 1973}, London: Jonathan Cape, pp.139-147

References (2)

• Duncan Smith, I. (2011) ‘Restoring fairness to the welfare system’, Speech to the Conservative Party Annual Conference, 3 October

• Dwelly, T. and Cowans. J. (2006) Rethinking Social Housing London: the Smith Institute

• Forrest, R. (2010) ‘A privileged state?’, in Malpass, P. and Rowlands, R. (eds) Housing Markets and Policy London: Routledge

• Ginsburg, N. (2005) ‘The privatisation of council housing’, Critical Social Policy, vol.25, no.1, pp.115-135

• Hacker, J. (2004) ‘Privatising risk without privatising the welfare state: the hidden politics of social policy retrenchment in the United States’, American Political Science Review, vol. 98, no.2, pp.243-260.

• Harvey, D. (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism Oxford: Oxford University Press• Hills, J. (2007) Ends and Means: the Future Roles of Social Housing in England

London: London School of Economics• King, P. (2006) Choice and the End of Social Housing London: Institute for Economic

Affairs

References (3)

• Malpass, P. (2005) Housing and the Welfare State: The Development of Housing Policy in Britain Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

• Malpass, P. and Rowlands, R. (2010) ‘Introduction: Transformation and change in housing’, P. Malpass and R. Rowlands (eds.) Housing, Markets and Policy London: Routledge

• Mooney, G. and Poole, L. (2005) ‘Marginalised voices: Resisting the privatisation of council housing in Glasgow, Local Economy, vol.20, no.1, pp.27-39

• Self, P. (2000) Rolling Back the Market: Economic Dogma and Political Choice London: Macmillan