Where should we draw the line between the social and the private?

Posted: June 15, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Financialisation, Housing associations, Social housing | Leave a comment

Originally published as a column for Inside Housing on June 15.

The borderline between the social and the private has been blurring for decades for housing associations.

Ever since private finance was introduced in 1988, they have been free (or forced) to match grant with borrowing in the knowledge that higher rents would mostly be covered by housing benefit.

If it’s always been something of a Faustian pact with governments intent on reducing public spending and lenders focussed on the bottom line, there have been undoubted benefits not just in terms of homes delivered in the short term but also surpluses reinvested and major social businesses developed for the long term.

But the question has always been whether and when the housing Dr Faustus would have to deliver on the price of the pact.

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A warning from Berlin

Posted: April 9, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Financialisation, Germany, Housing associations, Privatisation, Social housing | Leave a comment

Originally published on my blog for Inside Housing.

The large demonstrations in Berlin on Saturday demanding the expropriation of the property of the city’s two biggest landlords are a warning to their counterparts in this country about what can happen when public and political opinion turns against you.

Yes, there is a particular context for the demos, with communism in East Berlin and an expectation of cheap rents in West Berlin predating the free market pressures of a global capital city.

And yes we are talking about two large private corporate landlords that own more than 100,000 homes each.

But to bring things closer to home, both companies identified in the protestors’ placards – Deutsche Wohnen in particular but also Vonovia – have their roots in social housing and grew out of communal housing associations.

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The best housing books of 2018

Posted: December 17, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Council housing, Financialisation, History, Land | Leave a comment

Originally published as a column for Inside Housing on December 17.

As housing has risen up the political and media agendas, so the shelves are filling with books explaining where we’ve gone wrong and what we could do to put things right.

Reflecting that, and just in time for anyone wondering what to get the housing nerd in their life for Christmas, here are my three housing books of the year.

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First up is John Boughton’s indispensable history of council housing, Municipal Dreams – The Rise and Fall of Council Housing.

It’s a predictable choice and one already made by many other reviewers but it is one that is better late than never and one that will be even more worth reading next year against the background of the centenary of Homes Fit for Heroes.

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Book review: The Financialization of Housing

Posted: November 13, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Financialisation, Housing market, Mortgages, Private renting, Regulation, Social housing | Tags: | Leave a comment

The Global Financial Crisis was a wake-up call to the world about the dangers posed by a toxic mix of finance and housing, one that has still not been properly heeded.

The mortgage-backed securities, collaterialised debt obligations and other financial instruments that financed the expansion of sub-prime and predatory lending were the result of a wave of innovation by a finance industry that had been deregulated over the previous 20 years. Britain marked the 30th anniversary of the Big Bang in the City last month but similar things happened around the developed world.

All that innovation and securitisation led to exponential increases in the amount of credit circulating within the financial system but it still needed something to be secured against. Which is where housing came in: a mortgage finance system that had been based on long-term mortgage lending funded from savings was transformed into a vehicle for the expansion of credit. And the relationship between the price of homes and the earnings of people buying them was also transformed.

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The Financializaton of Housing: A Political Economy Approach, a new book by Manuel Aalbers, is the most comprehensive attempt I’ve seen to outline this process and its consequences. It’s part of a multinational research project based at the University of Leuven in Belgium on what he calls the Real Estate/Financial Complex in 12 different countries around the world. The metaphor is a deliberate echo of the military/industrial complex and serves to emphasise the connections not just between the real estate and financial sectors but also between each of them and the state.

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