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This article seeks to explore the efficacy of the Housing-Resale Restriction (HRR) policy in curtailing housing speculation, complementing existing literature that primarily examines the impact of taxation. The HRR policy directly reduces speculative opportunities through heightened liquidity constraints. Employing the methodology of regression discontinuity in time (RDiT), this study analyzes the impact of liquidity constraints on housing price growth rates based on the monthly community-level data from Qingdao, China, where the HRR policy was the most stringent in terms of scope and holding time requirement. The results show that the HRR policy reduced housing price growth rates by 1.3881 to 2.1001% points on average. Moreover, the disincentive impact was less pronounced in affluent, recently developed communities and those near subway stations. These findings provide valuable insights for policymakers to regulate the real estate market, mitigate excessive speculation, and prevent market bubbles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current ecological challenges with an urgent necessity to reduce consumption of energy and resources call for a reconsideration of many aspects of current (western) lifestyles. Since housing is one major source of energy and resource consumption, the development of a sustainable housing provision is of upmost importance. Unfortunately, the public debate is constricted to efficiency and consistency measures, based on technical improvements, which do not question norms and values leading to necessary lifestyle changes. Such a one-sided approach will fall short for various reasons – the most important being the ever-increasing per capita housing space that cancels out efficiency gains. Instead, discussions on an environmentally sound housing provision should consider the concept of sufficiency, leading to a reduction of the physical building stock due to a decrease in per capita consumption. Despite acknowledging the necessity of a reduced per capita living space, the academic debate remains quite limited without offering appropriate systematic strategies. Thus, this paper takes up the instrument of home swapping to discuss its holistic value, adding to the debate on sufficiency strategies in the field of housing. It is shown that home swapping has enormous potential to reduce per capita housing space by better allocating living space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flex-housing is a form of (social) rental housing where the dwelling unit, the building location or the inhabitation period are temporary. Flex-housing developed as a potential stop-gap solution in Dutch housing policy, to temper the acute housing shortages in the country and provide accommodation to a set of vulnerable groups of residents. This policy review traces the emergence of flex-housing as a 'housing hack' in the Dutch housing policy milieu and outlines the legal changes that enabled its development, including short-term contracts since 2015, a stimulus package aimed at the building sector in 2019, and its promotion to a full-fledged solution in the coalition agreement of 2021. The review further follows the parallel efforts to define the target group for this type of housing, which pieced together 'demanding and resourceful tenants' over time under the umbrella of 'spoedzoeker' (people in urgent need of housing) and discusses the perpetuating inequity and precarity of flex-housing residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to liberalism and social democracy, conservative ideology is presented in the literature to have had an ambiguous and much less significant influence on housing policy-making. The article argues that alongside measures facilitating the commodification of housing based in liberal ideology and those fostering the de-commodification of housing rooted in social democracy, the conservative idea of promoting little-commodified family property ownership as an antidote to proletarianisation brought about by capitalism and the guarantee of social stability has also underlain housing policy-making in various countries and eras. Based on works synthesising conservative political philosophy and the housing literature, characteristics of a conservative housing regime are defined. The construction, deconstruction and reconstruction of the Hungarian conservative housing regime over the past 120 years is then reviewed to trace mechanisms and conditions contributing to the enduring significance of the paradigm. The article concludes that strong conservative orientation of the country's early housing policies, the forceful retrenchment of this housing paradigm during state socialism and the disillusionment with neoliberalism after the 2009 mortgage crisis are the main causes behind the (re-)construction of a markedly conservative housing regime in Hungary in the past decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting the approach of O'Shaughnessy et al. (2020), this article attempts to study the impact of different Greek housing services on the freedom of beneficiaries to develop their capabilities for a well-lived life, according to the views of service providers. After drawing links between capabilities, housing approaches and welfare, the article examines four housing programmes in Greece—two for homeless people and two for asylum seekers—through interviews with representatives of housing services. The article argues that Housing First services are thought to have greater impact on beneficiaries' capabilities than services based on the 'Staircase of Transition' approach, but the incomplete application of Housing First schemes, to date, erodes the maximisation of their social effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing credit inflows are a substantial contributor to the economic opportunities and vitality of a community. However, these opportunities have not been dispersed equitably across diverse subpopulations and neighborhoods. Although various public and private initiatives have been launched to address inequitable access to mortgage capital, the role of localized and decentralized housing programs in achieving racially equitable outcomes remains understudied. As a case study, this study examines whether a decentralized and localized housing policy without explicit regulations for resource distribution across racial and ethnic groups promotes racial and neighborhood equity, focusing on its role in serving racial minority households and neighborhoods underserved by private mortgage markets. By incorporating various statistical methods, this study provides evidence that controlling for other factors, the program disproportionately supports racial minority households and neighborhoods that are underserved by private mortgage capital, although this positive role can vary across localities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 2000s, Morocco's government is running the Villes Sans Bidonville programme (VSBP) as a literal reference to international policy claims for Cities Without Slums. Initially and in contrast to past, unsuccessful attempts to eradicate the country's bidonvilles, more inclusive resettlement schemes – participatory and affordable for all – should help to avoid that residents resell resettlement housing and move back to bidonvilles. However, this article shows that with the advancement of VSBP, more recent resettlement has become authoritarian, exclusionary, and unaffordable again. Large numbers of low-income households of one of Rabat/Salé's last bidonvilles are effectively excluded from accessing resettlement housing, because they cannot afford the construction of a house on their assigned resettlement plot. For many, reselling their plot is the only option to access alternative housing after displacement. Building on narrative and biographic interviews with displaced former bidonville residents who are not living at the resettlement site, this article looks at how displaced bidonville dwellers cope with housing unaffordability. Where do people move why if affordable informal housing is demolished and state-subsidised alternatives are inaccessible? The results show how unaffordable resettlement schemes divide established bidonville communities, leaving the most vulnerable residents behind. Furthermore, they highlight people's severe constraints, struggles, and uncertainties in seeking to achieve decent residential stability outside stressful rental accommodation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persisting housing challenges in Africa's cities are often theorized as driven by rapid demographic expansion outstripping housing supply or by the urbanization of poverty which puts the cost of adequate and serviced housing beyond the reach of many urban dwellers. This theorization links the problem of inadequate supply and low quality of housing to ahistorical, apolitical factors such as the size and income/poverty characteristics of Africa's urban population and ignores legacies of elite capture and multi-dimensional exclusions reflected in policies and practices. Yet these policies and practices shape urban governance and who gains access to land, housing finance and ultimately serviced housing and neighborhoods. Drawing on a review of policies, media sources and literature on housing in Ghana and taking a critical postcolonial institutional theoretic approach, we argue that a more complete conceptualization of Africa's urban housing crises should involve a close look at the regressive historical patterns of urban investments and persisting elite biases in institutions managing land, finance and housing. This re-framing of housing problems creates a more holistic framework and better articulates the unjust foundations of regressive and exclusionary policies and practices. Further, it highlights elite capture and multi-dimensional exclusions that perpetuate current housing and service failure in African cities. An explicit focus on power, exclusion and injustice is necessary to formulate and advocate alternative policies that are more likely to produce inclusive livable housing and neighborhoods. These include moratoriums on evictions, expanded slum upgrading, progressive property and land taxation, more inclusive planning systems, better regulation of rental housing and improved delivery of land and finance for transit oriented affordable public and rental housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Canada, emerging discussions about colonialism and ongoing retrenchment from the welfare state, including social housing, accentuate the urgency of addressing housing need in ways that uphold both human and Indigenous rights. Through questionnaires and interviews with 28 non-profit housing providers in British Columbia, Manitoba, and New Brunswick, this paper examines the intersection of human and Indigenous rights with the provision of low-rent non-market housing. It identifies barriers and strategies to advancing the right to housing in Canada's settler-colonial capitalist context and, in doing so, articulates possibilities for new policies upholding housing as a human and Indigenous right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2023 political year in the United States was dominated by three major themes: the legal problems of former President Donald Trump, particularly in light of his campaign to regain the White House in 2024; the near‐total dysfunctionality of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives; and the state of the economy, especially inflation, but also employment. Lurking in the background, and in large measure captive to these concerns, were the issues of immigration and aid to Israel and Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social mix and the connection of the most disadvantaged sectors of the population to urban services lie at the heart of current housing policy in Chile. With the help of social and territorial integration, the policy seeks to remedy the acute, long-standing crisis of segregation in Chilean cities. The evidence enables us to classify the process into stages, highlighting the role of the State, private agents and social demand in achieving social integration through social mix based on the provision of housing subsidies, the inclusion of the working class in the city, and the possibility of producing urban spaces to support encounter rather than exclusion. The intersection of these agencies has given rise to the discussions upon which the structure of the present article is based, and we offer a variety of conceptual approaches to the political foundations of the housing debate and its agency in the question of social mix. We conduct a critical discourse analysis covering legislative and political sources and scientific and press articles that address the question of social mix, beginning with a classification of integration processes over time. We then go on to discuss current spatial outcomes in Chile's major cities. We conclude with reflections to guide future debates on the subject, paying particular attention to the political capacity of the State and private agents in the struggle to capture the idea of social integration through subsidised housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just a few decades after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights pronounced housing as a human right in 1948, the concept of the home as shelter was overshadowed by home ownership and asset creation, resulting in inadequate affordable housing, or homelessness for many, in urban contexts. Despite this, the house as a material and spatial artefact and the production of the home are consistently in negotiation by individuals and groups who are marginalized from the hegemonic private housing and real estate system. This article is an examination of the ways in which radical practices of everyday homemaking can inform professional design practice and policy to facilitate better housing for dignified inhabitation. The study of houses self-built or upgraded in Mumbai, India, and Brighton and Hove, United Kingdom, demonstrate that living takes place through shifting imaginations of the house as property to that of the home, involving aspiration and flexibility. This form of design is produced by persistently reworking the home, through innovative design solutions that assemble spatial and material bricolages and non-standard designs, implemented by a slew of small-time contractors and workers that form an extended ecology of design practice. These findings open new logics of delivery systems and consequent configurations of space that enrich lived relationships, experiences, and imaginations, often overlooked by mainstream frameworks of housing. This article, therefore, expands the debate on housing quantity to meet the current housing needs, to include quality of living within these, that can be influenced through a reformulation of professional design practice and policy. Comparing the two cities across the Global South and the Global North develops an understanding of generalizations and the particularities related to housing contexts, and informs how housing precarity operates beyond a certain locality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite featuring very different housing systems, both in Vienna and Milan a growing number of people struggle to access affordable and decent housing. Even though social housing policies are in place in both contexts, for many the unregulated and often unaffordable private housing market is the only option. Building upon Antonio Tosi's work, we centre our analysis on the poor and compare how two very different local housing systems create the conditions for their inclusion or exclusion. Through a comparative analysis of the Viennese and Milanese local housing regimes and adopting a mixed methodology, we discuss how both generate conditions of exclusion and who the ones excluded are, which local policies address the poor and how appropriate these are for mitigating housing exclusion. Finally, we indicate some directions for policies aimed at tackling the intersections of poverty and housing exclusion, advocating for a maximization of the 'sociality' of housing policies, involving a shift in prioritisation from the middle classes to the most vulnerable groups and the loosening of certain formal access requirements to housing or welfare services that constitute barriers to these groups, where possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The performance of functions by a modern state in all spheres of life of society and individuals, a high level of social obligations, along with the main traditional tasks of maintaining defense capability and internal order, require a strong and stable financial system. Historical experience shows that payments made by the population to their state were not voluntary and consisted of mandatory, compulsory withdrawal of part of the payer's funds or property in favor of the state, which in turn contributed to the population's search for ways to avoid making these payments. The housing construction industry is one of the most risky sectors of the modern economy. According to Article 47 of the Constitution of Ukraine, everyone has the right to housing. The state shall create conditions under which every citizen will be able to build housing, purchase it as property or rent it. According to Article 47 of the Basic Law of Ukraine, the right to housing can be realized by building housing, purchasing it in ownership or renting it, and by citizens in need of social protection - by receiving social housing from the state or local governments free of charge or for a fee affordable to them in accordance with the law. Citizens in need of social protection are provided with housing by the state and local self-government bodies free of charge or for an affordable fee in accordance with the law. Citizens in need of social protection are provided with housing by the state and local governments free of charge or for an affordable fee in accordance with the law. The need for housing construction is growing every year and, as a result, more and more construction companies are entering the market. Today, when thousands of apartment buildings have been destroyed as a result of the hostilities, this need is even more urgent. Therefore, close attention to the activities of developers by the state often manifests itself in a rather drastic change of the so-called "rules of the game", including in the field of taxation. Given the growth in construction volumes and expansion of the real estate market, tax evasion in the field of housing construction can significantly undermine the state's financial resources, threaten budgetary sustainability and limit the government's ability to meet the housing needs of citizens. However, an effective fight against these offenses can contribute to the creation of a perfect tax system and increase financial discipline in the field of housing construction. The article examines the theoretical and legal aspects of criminal liability for criminal liability for tax evasion, fees (mandatory payments) in the field of housing construction, and the provisions of the Criminal Code of Ukraine and other legal acts. The article examines the theoretical and legal aspects of criminal liability for criminal liability for tax evasion, fees (mandatory payments) in the field of housing construction, the provisions of the Criminal Code of Ukraine and other legal acts. The author formulates requirements for improving legislation on tax evasion in the field of housing construction and the need to provide support for housing constr uction and settle tax issues in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the burgeoning literature related to reparative planning, with an emphasis on housing policy. After exploring the state of theorizing related to reparative planning, this paper describes its three central dimensions: public recognition, material redistribution, and social/spatial transformation. The authors use these dimensions to evaluate a housing policy designed to repair harms to Black residents in Portland, Oregon. This in-depth analysis draws on survey, interview, and focus group data to explore the degree to which residents’ experiences of the policy reflect these three dimensions. The paper concludes with implications for other municipalities considering reparative housing policies, namely the need to explicitly name the harm(s) the policy is designed to repair, for robust accountability measures to guide policy implementation and for holistic community development strategies that attend to multiple dimensions of racial reparation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing conditions and quality are well-established structural or social determinants of health. Poor quality housing also has the potential to affect care needs, but there is much less research on the topic, particularly on nonspecialist housing. Based on analysis of in-depth interviews with 44 people aged 65 and older living in England, their unpaid carers (N = 22), or as a carer-care recipient dyad (N = 6), (total N = 72), this study sought to explore the perceived relationship between people’s housing conditions and characteristics and their care needs. Findings indicate three key themes within this relationship: condition of home (cold and damp; state of repair; cleanliness and clutter); space and design (space, access); and legal relationship with the home (ability to carry out remedial work; precarity). There was variation in how and whether housing affected care needs by housing tenure, financial resources, and the type and level of care need. Care needs can increase requirement for warmer, less damp homes and be a barrier to improving homes. In turn, housing has a role to play in preventing the occurrence or worsening of care needs. Improving housing through policy and practice actions could reduce care needs and improve the lives of older people now and in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid growth of marginal settlements in the Global South, largely fueled by the resettlement of millions of internally displaced people (IDPs), underscores the urgent need for tailored housing solutions for these vulnerable populations. However, prevailing approaches have often relied on a one-size-fits-all model, overlooking the diverse socio-spatial realities of IDP communities. Drawing on a case study in Medellin, Colombia, where a significant portion of the population consists of forced migrants, this interdisciplinary study merges concepts from human geography and urban theory with computational methods in remote sensing and exploratory spatial data analysis. By integrating socio-spatial theory with quantitative analysis, we challenge the conventional housing paradigm and propose a novel framework for addressing the housing needs of IDPs. Employing a three-phase methodology rooted in Lefebvre's theoretical framework on the production of space, including participatory mapping, urban morphology characterization, and similarity analysis, we identify distinct patterns within urban IDP settlements and advocate for culturally sensitive housing policies. Our analysis, focusing on Colombia, the country with the largest IDP population globally, reveals the limitations of standardized approaches and highlights the importance of recognizing and accommodating socio-cultural diversity in urban planning. By contesting standardized socio-spatial practices, our research aims not only to promote equality but also to foster recognition and inclusivity within marginalized communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various studies have identified that older adults’ assessment of their housing quality differs from that deemed as good-quality housing by housing professionals. This has prompted the need to advance academic discourse beyond simply reporting high levels of satisfaction in older adult’s housing surveys. This study attempts to achieve this by using empirical data gathered through a mixed quantitative and qualitative research approach conducted with older adults in Slovenia. While the quantitative survey revealed generally high levels of satisfaction, the qualitative face-to-face interviews revealed numerous deficiencies, irrespective of whether older adults tended to express satisfaction with their dwellings. Therefore, our findings suggest that attributes such as ownership, period of residence, and neighborhood relations are far more important in determining housing satisfaction. Thus, we conclude that policies and programs for modifying housing for older adults must be based on a deeper understanding of their specific needs. During the policy formulation process and the implementation of specific housing improvement programs, emphasis should be placed on the social-historical aspects related to the lifestyle of each specific older adult. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractIdeal point estimation methods in the social sciences lack a principled approach for identifying multidimensional ideal points. We present a novel method for estimating multidimensional ideal points based on ℓ1 distance. In the Bayesian framework, the use of ℓ1 distance transforms the invariance problem of infinite rotational turns into the signed perpendicular problem, yielding posterior estimates that contract around a small area. Our simulation shows that the proposed method successfully recovers planted multidimensional ideal points in a variety of settings including non-partisan, two-party, and multi-party systems. The proposed method is applied to the analysis of roll call data from the United States House of Representatives during the late Gilded Age (1891-1899) when legislative coalitions were distinguished not only by partisan divisions but also by sectional divisions that ran across party lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enhancing the support for inclusive finance in county economies is crucial in achieving the strategic goal of building financial power. Drawing upon the theoretical lens of county-level inclusive financial accessibility, this study examines the effect of the migration experience (ME) of county socialites on their risky financial assets investment (FAI) and the underlying mechanisms. We utilize data sourced from the County Consumption Survey, a nationwide effort by the Department of Sociology of Tsinghua University and the 58 Tongzhen Research Group. Our findings reveal that the ME of county socialites significantly boosts their likelihood of engaging in financial markets. Furthermore, housing inequality factors, such as housing property rights and housing loans, play a moderating role in the impact of individual ME on their FAI. Additionally, the financial concept has a masking effect rather than a mediating effect on the path of the ME affecting FAI. Notably, the promotion effect of ME displays heterogeneity. Specifically, ME has a stronger positive effect on FAI among college-educated groups, members of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and urban hukou residents than on those who have not completed college education, non-CPC members and rural hukou households. In light of these findings, we propose policy recommendations to optimize the distribution of financial services, adjust the housing equality policy, and enhance inclusive financial literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States faces a rental housing crisis marked by a scarcity of housing supply, leading to intense competition among prospective tenants. This crisis is a particular challenge for the more than one hundred million U.S. residents burdened with negative records such as criminal records, debts in collections, and evictions. Landlords have more access than ever to applicants’ information, yet little is known about how landlords process and think about these records to make housing decisions. This Article draws on theories of cultural sociology to provide a data-driven understanding of how landlords conceptualize the value of several types of personal records and what it means to use them legally and fairly. It offers a window into how decision-makers evaluate and ascribe meaning to records—including negative records, for which tenants can be denied housing—and how these meanings subsequently guide landlords’ rental decisions. Through eighty-eight interviews with landlords, property managers, rental company executives, and tenant-screening company executives, this interdisciplinary, multistate study leverages comparisons across record type and organization size. It shows how access to housing largely depends on cultural understandings of the morality of different types of negative records. Depending on the type of risk landlords perceive, they call upon different cultural archetypes when deciding how and why to include certain records in their decision-making. However, the processes by which landlords incorporate these cultural considerations vary by organizational size and stem from their perceptions of the law. This Article thus provides a key theoretical insight: Landlords operate with broadly shared cultural understandings about the nature of risk and the morality of various types of negative records, but with different conceptions of what it means to make rental decisions legally and fairly. Differences correspond with the structure and size of decision-makers’ organizations. This means that collateral consequences play out differently depending on the type of landlord a prospective tenant is dealing with. As part of this discussion, this Article further provides a novel understanding of how state and local data-use laws, as well as the Fair Housing Act, operate on the ground. Ultimately, the theoretical insights from this study can help inform housing policy going forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how tenants' organizations approach the state for "post-neoliberal housing policy" that challenges decades of neoliberal housing governance. It introduces the concept of "counter-hegemonic legislative strategies" to illustrate how tenants' movements in Spain have achieved this policy shift by influencing legislative changes. In contrast to traditional lobbying or representation-focused movements, unions aim to organize tenants offensively against the commodification of housing and capitalist relations, positioning themselves as counter-hegemonic forces. The paper outlines three mechanisms used to achieve this: turning tenant evictions and landlord threats into acts of civil disobedience; using the media strategically to shape narratives; and exploiting institutional windows of opportunity through alliances and political crises. While the legislative victories gained by these unions may fall short of their full demands, the paper emphasizes that their impact goes beyond political outcomes. Their activities contribute to contesting neoliberal housing trajectories, disrupting hegemonic governance, and reshaping the political landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the relationship between struggles for housing justice and alternative housing models is riddled with epistemological and methodological challenges. A posteriori definitions of specific housing typologies – for example, "co-operative housing" – fail to account for the often informal and fluid practices that constitute the emergence of housing commoning through collective organizing. This paper offers an empirically grounded theoretical analysis of the development of short-life co-operative housing in London, UK, since the 1970s. Taking a longitudinal view, it explores how performative power surges by squatters and other precariously housed people were sustained by federative organizing and aligned with central and municipal institutional experimentation, giving rise to significant, if precarious, shifts in housing policy and practice. The concept of "precarious institutionalization" names this state of contingency and furthers a political analysis of the maintenance of housing commoning against multiple enclosures, with wider implications for scholarship on contemporary movements for decommodified self-managed housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adds to a revitalization of alienation as a political problem in the field of housing studies, pointing us to property relations that fragment tenants from acting together with other residents in similar positions. Analyzing ethnographic observations and interviews conducted in Basel with tenants facing mass cancellations of rental contracts, it operationalizes the problem of alienation to more closely examine the interplay of property relations and the subjective or collective experience of tenants: The consolidation of landlords' interests through complicit legal frameworks fragments tenants not only by producing insecurities within affected blocks. This consolidation also drives processes of individualization and conflict between fellow tenants and between tenants and their union, as well as harms tenants' belief in (local) political institutions. On the other hand, experiencing these fragmentations and the widespread inhibition of people to act together with others is, in some cases, the most sorrowful aspect for tenants facing rental contract cancellations in Basel. With the proposed understanding of alienation, the paper adds to two debates in housing studies: Outlining alienating property relations, it first foregrounds institutional constraints regarding the question of why many residents do not confront landlords' plans. Secondly, political alienation highlights the sorrow that can stem from the inhibition of collective action. Here the paper contributes to the debate around displacement and un-homing, showing them to be much more than the loss of original habitat. Lastly, the paper responds to the query of how to empirically apply the theoretically driven concept of alienation by moving questions of collective agency to the fore in housing and alienation theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shared housing in the private rental sector (PRS) is becoming a globally significant household arrangement. However, research indicates that shared housing is associated with problems including financial and housing insecurity. Given the growth of shared housing in the PRS, it is necessary for policy solutions to appropriately address the needs of shared housing renters. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between housing policy and non-commercial shared housing in the PRS – that is, autonomous households in self-contained dwellings – and how this has been conceptualised and examined in academic scholarship thus far. To achieve these aims, we conduct a scoping review on non-commercial shared housing in the PRS. Research illustrates that the reality of shared housing is not accommodated well in existing housing policy systems. We analyse reasons that housing policy may not adapt easily to non-commercial shared housing, and outline the need for further research on policy implications and recommendations about shared housing in the PRS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like many countries in the OECD, Aotearoa NZ does not comprehensively regulate or enforce the safety of rental housing, despite evidence that the significant scale of home injury can be reduced through cost-effective home modifications. We examine the framing of home injury in media, political, and organisational discourse to identify barriers to creating and enforcing laws for safer rental homes. We find progress in addressing safety via rental housing regulations is stymied, in part, by institutional arrangements that favour the framing of home injury as a product of individual behaviour and culpability rather than environmental risk, and the prioritisation of education and awareness-raising over regulatory and systemic interventions framed politically, as overreaching 'nanny state' policies. We propose opportunities to address the incidence of injury and inequities in outcomes and argue that effective regulation and enforcement will address the inherent power inequities in the rental sector between owner and occupier, which can influence the presence of injury hazards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent declarations of the end of neoliberalism in the United Kingdom, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic, are underpinned by diffuse and unstructured understandings of the neoliberal state. We argue that state intervention is both necessary and unavoidable under neoliberalism. This article shows that the 'market-based' reforms and the 'rollback of the state' that overtly characterise neoliberalism are heavily reliant upon public policy and entail an ongoing role for state intervention both over time and across economic sectors. Using sectoral case studies of housing and water from within the United Kingdom, we demonstrate, through a tight analytical framing of both financialisation and commodification, the variegated though crucial role of the neoliberal state in restructuring provision to facilitate financialised accumulation and their transformations in response to the contradictions, dysfunctions and limitations of neoliberalised social reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discrepancies between homelessness perception and reality, as well as policymakers' assumptions about their constituents' perceptions, may contribute to policies that exacerbate homelessness and its negative outcomes. To counter these discrepancies, this manuscript introduces a mixed-methods, cross-sectional research protocol that is designed to assess local community member perceptions of and attitudes towards homelessness and potential housing solutions. The results of research modeled after this protocol can be used to inform local housing policy and community awareness campaigns. In this manuscript, we describe the protocol and its accompanying survey instrument, and the lessons our research team learned through the implementation of the protocol during the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers elsewhere can adapt this protocol to capture localized and nuanced data related to local perceptions of homelessness and housing policy. With commitment to representative resident sampling, this protocol and the data it captures can help advocates craft more responsive and individualized community housing policies than would be possible without localized data collection and analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scottish devolution built on an existing structure of administrative devolution around the Scottish Office. The architects of devolution gave a lot of attention to the design of the Scottish Parliament but less to policy-making and delivery. Much of the policy capacity built up since the 1960s had been run down under Conservative governments after 1979. The new Scottish institutions faced a number of institutional, economic and political constraints on making their own policies. There have been significant divergences from policy in England but often these take the form of England diverging while Scotland remained the same. Successive Scotland Acts in 2012 and 2016 were guided by political considerations rather than examination of the powers and instruments needed. There has been a lack of the policy innovation that might have been expected in the new system. The argument is illustrated by examples, together with some footnoted personal reflections from half a century of following policy making in Scotland. There is no attempt to be comprehensive but rather to highlight key issues and trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractRecognizing the negative effects of concentrated poverty on access to quality housing and neighborhood investment, governments have pursued poverty deconcentration policies such as mixed-income housing, which promotes neighborhood social mix to improve housing and neighborhood conditions. This study evaluated the effects of HOPE VI, an influential mixed-income housing policy in the U.S., on the housing context of surrounding neighborhoods using quasi-experimental methods and geocoded indicators from 1990–2016. We matched HOPE VI and control census tracts, then used a flexible conditional difference-in-differences method to estimate average treatment effects on the treated, accounting for differing treatment start dates and durations. Results demonstrate that HOPE VI increased housing values and rents, decreased vacancy rates, and decreased the age of housing relative to control tracts. There were no significant effects on homeownership rates. Impacts were strongest in neighborhoods that were high poverty, high vacancy, and predominantly Black prior to grant receipt. Results suggest that HOPE VI changed broader neighborhood housing contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractWe provide a legally-grounded and theoretically-oriented approach to the question of how large a home needs to be for it to count as adequate from the point of view of the right to housing. We propose that a rich understanding of the reasons for which there is such a right generates a framework to think about what housing needs to be like in order to count as adequate, and we suggest how this framework might help us to think about some questions about the physical characteristics and size of adequate housing. Using this framework, we consider the viability of various existing standards with particular attention to the case of Toronto, Canada, as an illustration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although refugees in the UK are highly susceptible to the triad of factors – low income, poor housing and high energy bills – that produce vulnerability to energy deprivation, literature on this issue is rare. We therefore propose a framework towards understanding the role of “non-energy” policies as drivers of energy deprivation among UK refugees, using the conceptual lenses of deservingness, welfare chauvinism and domicide to demonstrate how the condition has been deliberately produced under the UK government’s Hostile Environment approach. We argue that this approach not only damages the physical materiality of housing and the emotional space of home, but also deleteriously impacts upon refugees’ ability to access adequate energy services. Energy deprivation thus emerges as a hidden consequence of policies that normalize precarious housing, a denial of rights, and inadequate incomes, in which “home” becomes a site of exclusion that achieves the Hostile Environment’s goal – making everyday life unbearable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractWhile there are an abundance of studies evaluating the effectiveness of Housing First programs, there is a recent surge in critical social science research that situates Housing First within broader debates about contemporary neoliberal homelessness governance. This paper provides clarity to this evolving and somewhat fragmented work by highlighting three main conceptualisations of critical Housing First research. First, it is interpreted as a technocratic global fast policy that, while appealing to policymakers and government officials, ultimately fails to address the structural causes of housing insecurity and homelessness. Second, it is viewed as an economic tool that prioritises housing for a narrow cohort of ‘chronic homeless’ that incur a high cost to scarce public resources. Third, it is seen as a disciplinary tactic that ignores people’s alternative expressions of home and compels them to abide by the norms of ‘independent living’ and the private rental market. We conclude with an assessment of this critical literature. Whilst acknowledging its key insights, we contend that its treatment of Housing First as yet another form of neoliberal homelessness governance and overreliance on Anglophone-country case studies risks reifying HF’s worst aspects and failing to adequately recognise its transformative potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses housing securitization in Brazil during 2007–2020 and provides three contributions to debates on the relations between the state and financialization in emerging markets. First, we highlight that the Brazilian state has gone far beyond the common role of market enabling, characterized by regulatory rollout and fiscal incentives. Instead, by acting as a market maker on the demand and supply side, it has provided the required liquidity and depth for the emerging segment of residential securitization. Unlike the financial disintermediation through private market makers such as brokerage houses and individual traders that provide risk-reduction, Brazilian securitization has unfolded through the issuance and acquisition of securities by the state's housing bank and its associated social housing fund. Second, unlike the speculative Minsky type of booms and busts that characterize privately-driven markets, state market making generates a trajectory that is associated with the capacity of governments to roll-out markets for residential securitization. While the social-developmental stance of the Lula and Dilma administrations have boosted securitization, the market-oriented austerity politics of the Temer and Bolsonaro administrations have quickly dried up secondary markets. Finally, while securitization was initially a means to the end of social housing, it seems increasingly the other way around. More specifically, considering that thick and consolidated secondary markets ultimately depend on the quality and stability of the underlying loans and income streams that originate operations, stricter risk reduction and guarantees clauses have gradually penetrated the social housing segment and threaten to undermine the right to secure tenure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many public housing units in Italy are vacant or in critical need of repair due to continuous political withdrawal and a structural lack of funds. To cover overheads with low rents – linked by law to the income of poor households – Italian public housing organizations and municipal authorities were turned into companies despite their welfare function and rely largely on the sale of properties to balance their budgets. In the context of protracted disinvestment in public housing, the paper adds to the growing body of research on cooperatives' role in hybrid housing policies. By investigating the regional upscaling of a pioneering partnership in Milan, codified in the "Valorization-alternative-to-sale" law by the Lombardy regional government, we explore the opportunities and limitations of partnerships between public authorities and cooperatives for the management of public housing in alternative to the sale of the stock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to understand how housing legality is negotiated and contextually constructed by investigating the highly regulated German context of Berlin. It investigates the varying tenants' experiences affected by the enforcement and abolition of the city's rental cap law (Berliner Mietendeckel-Geset), implemented between February 2020 and April 2021. The article frames the case study of Berlin in the context of legality and develops a typology of legal and illegal practices within this case. Through collecting data from 19 tenants using semi-structured interviews to identify recurring narratives and experiences, the article explores how legality is negotiated and socially constructed. The results suggest that a spectrum of gray legality emerges from these negotiations, breaking the binary view of legality in the Global North. This spectrum covers legality, semi-legality, semi-illegality, and illegality. Gray legality refers to incidents where it becomes hard to judge the complete adherence or lack of compliance with a law. Hence, this article contributes to understanding illegality as a state–society relationship defined not only by laws and regulations but also by publicly accepted practices and the often-untraceable stakeholder negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wealthy and orderly city of Geneva, Switzerland, accommodation centres built in haste between the 1950s and the 1980s to house seasonal guestworkers from southern Europe are still standing and still inhabited. Today's residents are precarious workers, undocumented or with temporary permits as well as asylum seekers. While the seasonal status disappeared in the early 2000s, the demand for low-skilled, flexible labour did not. Analysing the historical trajectories of specific buildings helps us to answer the question of who replaced the seasonal workers, not only in the labour and the housing markets, but also in the symbolic spectrum of legitimacy. This article introduces the notion of 'Subaltern Housing Policies' to account for the public action that leads to the production and subsequent use of forms of housing characterised by standards of comfort and security far below those of the rental and social housing stock, but considered 'good enough' for their occupants. We argue that 'subaltern' relates not only to housing conditions, but also to the policies themselves, and last but not least to the people who are subjected to them. This notion allows us to trace a link between the production of substandard forms of housing and the production of categories of people who are kept on the margins of full citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the challenges of controlling short-term rentals (STR) in an era of intermediation by digital platforms, focusing on the process of regulatory enforcement. Drawing on evidence from large European cities, it investigates how public authorities identify and tackle STR deemed illegal, how operators of illegal STR seek to escape detection, and the relationships between city governments and digital platforms in the process of regulatory enforcement. The article shows what digitalisation and 'platformisation' do to the possibility of (local) state regulation of housing informality and illegality in the European context. As platforms have been reluctant to release individualised STR listings to local authorities, the latter have had to rely on imperfect, 'DIY' methods of data gathering in the physical and digital worlds, in the context of attempts to regulate STR for public interest objectives such as the protection of the long-term residential stock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federal advisory committees related to science and technology are important mechanisms for connecting policy-makers with independent experts and the broader public. The balance of represented expertise and viewpoints shapes a committee's intended advisory role, consensus building processes, and the quality and impact of its policy recommendations. This paper presents the first historical analysis of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and examines its changing balance of social and professional perspectives from 1990 to 2023. We demonstrate that PCAST's balance has shifted to be more inclusive of different social groups and professional backgrounds over time, particularly under President Biden. We conclude with recommendations for future White House science policy advisory bodies to ensure they are adequately representative of the diversity of perspectives in the US research enterprise and the overall US population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical consciousness leads to a deeper understanding of rural housing policies and helps to find structural solutions to the present-day situation. This statement is illustrated with a study on two villages in the Dutch province of Drenthe. Starting with a historical account of the post-war 'top-down' planning culture, the analysis moves further by assessing the change towards a 'bottom-up' planning culture. This culture fulfils the needs of those who living in villages better. However, old habits remain in place and hamper the new culture to become more mature. Historical consciousness helps administrators, civil servants, and actors from the local civil society to become aware of (in)effective behaviour. The concept of a new 'bottom-up' planning culture helps them to develop the formal and informal ways for the construction of housing further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite significant policy developments addressing youth housing insecurity in Australia, youth remain subject to multiple housing arrangements that can lead to homelessness more than any other cohort. We focus on the housing sequences of youths, and we seek information in the order and duration of accommodation types used. We employ Journeys Home – a unique longitudinal dataset specifically designed to examine issues relating to homelessness or housing instability in Australia. We combine accommodation calendars with data-driven sequence analysis techniques that holistically consider the information in the accommodation sequence. Specifically, we identify a set of distinct accommodation typologies and find that those who experience the greatest housing insecurity are comparatively less likely to be educated or employed and more likely to have dependent children who are not living with them. Importantly, we find that not all housing insecurity is necessarily associated with primary homelessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first field experiments to encourage participation in local civic bodies, I examine whether outreach can reduce inequalities in who participates in city council meetings. Renter participation in local politics lags that of home owners, who often participate to oppose housing growth. A total of 19,951 renter households received randomly assigned emails encouraging them to comment at their city council meetings and support housing growth. Opening a message highlighting potential costs of abstention from local politics increased public comments by 1.4 percentage points versus a placebo. These effects are substantively large: treatment-induced comments represented 8% of total comments and 46% of pro-housing comments across all targeted meetings. The results suggest that even low-cost outreach strategies can meaningfully increase participation in lesser known settings like city councils and make these bodies more reflective of the general public. Further, increasing the perception that abstention is costly appears to be an effective motivator of collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's 65% population resides in rural regions, making these places the heart and soul of the nation. These regions, along with their residents and houses, serve as a reflection of the nation. Previous researchers have described rural houses in social and humanities literature, but their observations have mostly been descriptive rather than analytical. Therefore, conducting a thorough analytical investigation is necessary to fully understand the mental image that people currently have of rural houses. This study aims to develop a theoretical framework for the typology of rural houses and identify the aspects that contribute to a thorough understanding of housing in rural India. The current state of rural houses must be examined as they are changing from traditional to modern architecture. The research study area was selected, Lakhan Village in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. In this village, fieldwork was carried out to determine the types and characteristics of long-established houses. A simple random sampling method was employed to collect the data, and the sample size was determined using the Cochrane formula. The authors' extensive professional first-hand experience in rural houses in Uttar Pradesh integrates with theoretical and analytical analysis in this research. The study sheds light on the development of rural houses in Lakhan Village and highlights several elements that have an impact on a house's overall imageability. It includes recommendations for future growth, gives an in-depth understanding of how rural housing has developed in India, and discusses the reasons that have influenced that development. The study's conclusion highlights the significance of utilizing a holistic strategy to address the challenges with rural housing. The findings of this study will be helpful to researchers, policymakers, and other officials involved in constructing rural houses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A qualitative study utilizing interviews was used to identify the core motivations for the origination of collegiate sport fanship and fandom in the American Southeast. The sample included 20 individual adults that reside in the southeastern United States, either Alabama (n = 2), Arkansas (n = 3), Kentucky (n = 3), Mississippi (n = 5), or South Carolina (n = 7). The sample only included participants from these particular states due to the unique context they provide, as well as exploring how identity as a Southerner may influence collegiate fanship and fandom. Each of these states house at least two major Division 1 NCAA collegiate athletics department, while also not housing any major-league-level professional sports. Thus, participants were more likely to identify with collegiate sports than those living in a region with a professional franchise. Results informed Social Identity theory, and indicated that there are a number of different factors that lead to the origination of collegiate fanship and fandom. Many of the factors deal with family ties, geography, and feeling a sense of belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]