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The assetisation of housing: A macroeconomic resource

The assetisation of housing: A macroeconomic resource The most significant episode in the assetisation of housing (underpinning its financialisation) is often understood to be the economic restructuring that took place during the 1980s – particularly deregulation of the banking sector and credit liberalisation. Research has reported on the housing ‘investor subject’ that emerged during this time, as an integral part of the transition towards financialised economies. This article provides new evidence about the housing consumer subject, and its place in this transition, by drilling into UK housing policy history and its discourses around the consumer relationship with housing. Using archive data from the Parliamentary and National Archives alongside interviews with key informers, we illustrate three cases of housing policy development in which the consumer demand for, and relationship with, housing is discursively reconditioned. We conclude that the housing investor subject was pursued in housing policy reform and its discourses well before the 1980s and the economic reforms commonly identified as the causes of financialisation. In addition, these discourses are found to have been reconditioned in order to align with broader macroeconomic policy concerns of the time. The article therefore provides a rare view of assetisation from within the state apparatus, revealing how housing policy and its discourses around consumption became functionally integrated within wider macroeconomic goals. Keywords Assetisation, England, financialisation, Housing, macroeconomic policy Ryan-Collins et al., 2012; Stephens, 2007). This pro- Introduction cess is supported by consumer demand for home The assetisation of land and housing has elicited sig- ownership (Jorda et al., 2016; Rolnik, 2013) and by a nificant attention in recent years (Ducastel and consumer relationship with housing in which homes Anseeuw, 2014; Gallent et al., 2019; Ward and provide asset-based welfare (Adkins et al., 2019) Swyngedouw, 2018). Understanding this form of through house-price Keynesianism (Crouch, 2009). assetisation is important because it is fundamental to the character of contemporary financialised capital- ism (Langley, 2021) and of national economies. For Corresponding author: example, the preference among banks for lending Phoebe Stirling, Darwin College, University of Cambridge, Silver secured against property, and the associated perverse Street, Cambridge CB3 9EU, UK. incentives are well known (Ryan Collins, 2019; Email: phoebe.stirling@ucl.ac.uk 16 European Urban and Regional Studies 30(1) The research project on which this article draws section elaborates the methodology, drawing on aimed to better understand the progressive assetisa- archive and interview data on housing policy devel- tion of housing in the United Kingdom. Following opment and discourse throughout the 20th and 21st the theory of a relationship between consumer hous- centuries. ‘Findings’ presents findings relating to ing choice and national political and economic three cases of housing policy development – each restructuring (Castles, 1998; Kemeny, 1981, 2005; linked to broader macroeconomic strategising of Schwartz and Seabrooke, 2008), we sought evidence government – and the discursive conditioning of the about the nature of this relationship: how this restruc- consumer relationship with housing associated with turing and actual market operation affect one another. these shifts in policy. Each case highlights how Opening the ‘black box’ of markets requires appre- housing policy has been designed not according to hending the ‘assemblage of material and technologi- the social function of housing, but according to much cal elements in combination with human activity’ broader macroeconomic concerns. The first reveals (Fields, 2017) that makes them up. From the various how housing policy has been designed to support elements involved in the assetisation of housing, this productive activity and national economic growth. article drills into housing policy discourse around The second illustrates a change in macroeconomic the consumer relationship with housing. While the thinking which led the 1951–1955 government to work of the state is only a part of the human activity strengthen the function of housing as an asset for that makes up the financialisation of housing, it is individual consumers. The third looks at more recent nevertheless a significant aspect and one of the most shifts from individual to institutional investment into overlooked (Christophers, 2017). the housing system. In each case, the consumer The article provides new evidence about the con- demand for, and relationship with, housing is discur- sumer relationship with housing, showing how pol- sively reconditioned to align with the broader mac- icy discourses around housing tenure and consumer roeconomic policy concerns of the time. subjectivities have been reconditioned around hous- ing as an asset, to support new directions in macro- Review of existing evidence economic policy throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. We reach two significant conclusions. What is the assetisation of housing? First, the assetisation of housing – the foundation of Housing systems are fundamental to national econo- its financialisation – was pursued through housing mies, leading macroeconomists to study the various policy reform well before the 1980s, supported ways they affect the dynamics of aggregate eco- through shifting policy discourses around the con- nomic activity. House prices can affect consumer sumer subject. Second, and more importantly, this spending (and therefore GDP) through the collateral trend was related to the macroeconomic concerns of channel, by improving access to additional credit for government, rather than concerns about housing homeowners (Muellbauer, 2007, 2018). Falling policy itself. The history related here shows how house prices can cause credit availability to contract, housing policy and its discourses have become func- even more than rising prices can lead it to expand tionally integrated with wider macroeconomic goals (Hendry and Muellbauer, 2018). House-price appre- such as to control inflation, and the pursuit of new ciation can also affect gross domestic product (GDP) forms of economic growth. The central implication through the wealth effect, encouraging households is that housing policy should be understood as a to save less and spend more (Kaplan et al., 2016; macroeconomic resource before being considered an Mian et al., 2013). Other channels include the liquid- element of social policy. ity channel, by which house prices can affect the The article has the following structure. The ease of sales and thereby also affect mortgage lend- ‘Review of existing evidence’ outlines the research ers’ attitudes to lending; as well as the cash-flow, on which this article draws, theorising a link between redistribution and income channels (Hedlund et al., contemporary capitalism and the housing choices of 2017). Monetary policy levers like interest rates can individual consumers. The ‘Data and analysis’ Stirling et al. 17 be used to manipulate the various ways that housing channels, rather than through trade or commodity functions as an asset through these channels, but production (Krippner, 2005). It is also used to such levers affect households differently depending describe the condition of specific markets which on their type of mortgage (e.g. variable or fixed) or have become financialised; those in which value is degree of leverage, hence the interest in housing created and managed not according to the inherent among macroeconomic scholars (Bahaj et al., 2018; materialities of the market concerned – in this case, Burrows, 2016; Calza et al., 2009; Cloyne et al., the consumer market for houses – but according to 2016; Fair, 2016; Geiger et al., 2016). There is debate the credit that can be secured on the expectation of about which levers, targets and variables should be steadily increasing economic rent (Bradley, 2021; considered by macroeconomic policymakers Gunnoe, 2014). This requires the reshaping of certain (Hendry and Muellbauer, 2018). It has been argued, elements within value chains (whether these be phys- for instance, that falling residential sales (leading to ical or organisational elements) so they can function falling employment in construction, finance and real as financial artefacts or investment opportunities estate, as well as in the production of consumer dura- (Birch, 2017; Ducastel and Anseeuw, 2014). The bles) might be the most accurate predictor of eco- commodities on offer – in this case housing – are still nomic recession, putting the emphasis on housing produced or for sale, but at the same time, their mar- consumption and housing starts (rather than house kets are fundamentally organised around their status prices per se) for macroeconomic wellbeing (Leamer, as an asset (rather than as a commodity). 2007, 2015). Scholars studying social and geographical out- How and why has housing been assetised? comes (rather than macroeconomic outcomes) have focused instead on asking how different regimes of Analytic interest in the financialisation of economic accumulation or modes of capitalism impact the and social life (and the assets at its foundation) pre- housing system (Lowe, 2011; Lowe et al., 2011; ceded the global financial crisis (GFC; Krippner, Ronald and Dewilde, 2017; Schwartz and Seabrooke, 2005; Langley, 2006) but the GFC-focused housing, 2008). Where the macroeconomic literature seeks to urban and regional studies on these phenomena understand the relationship dynamics between hous- (Aalbers, 2009, 2016; Botzem and Dobusch, 2017; ing and the macroeconomy, these scholars have Fields, 2017; Guironnet et al. 2016). Literature often emphasised the history of this relationship; not sim- pinpoints the 1970s and 1980s as decades of critical ply the role that housing plays as an asset, but its change (Birch, 2017; Christophers, 2017; Krippner, assetisation. ‘Assetisation’ is usually associated with 2005; Rolnik, 2013). There is a tendency to frame ‘financialisation’, being understood as ‘the path to the late 1970s and 1980s as the most significant turn- housing financialisation’ (Wu et al., 2020) or one of ing point in the history of the UK housing system, as the processes underpinning it (Birch, 2017; Ward capitalist economies moved from a Keynesian post- and Swyngedouw, 2018). For scholars of housing, war consensus (during the late 1940s to the 1970s) to urban and regional studies, analysis has focused on a post-Fordist regime, in response ‘to the 1970s oil understanding the driving forces of these phenom- shock and global recession’ (Waterhout et al., 2013: ena (Jorda et al., 2016; Pappa, 2016); the actors, 143, see also Crouch, 2009). The significance of the infrastructures and practices implicated (Aalbers, 1980s is well documented as a period that brought 2016; Botzem and Dobusch, 2017; Bradley, 2021; forth the economic and banking disruptions that Ducastel and Anseeuw, 2014; Fields, 2017; Ouma, have been identified as the ‘common causes’ of 2015; Savini and Aalbers, 2015) and their nature and financialisation (Gallent et al., 2017). These disrup- variegated impacts in different localities (Aalbers, tions included the deregulation of the banking sector 2009; Ward and Swyngedouw, 2018). and credit liberalisation (Gallent et al., 2017; Ryan- Financialisation is a form of economic restructur- Collins et al., 2012), drawing more diverse financial ing that can be identified across entire economies, in institutions into mortgage lending, advancing access which profit is created increasingly through financial to international capital markets for housing finance 18 European Urban and Regional Studies 30(1) (Balmaceda et al., 2014) and breaking the link Watson, 2010). Watson (2010: 414) discusses the between savings deposits and mortgage lending construction of investor subjects throughout the (Wainwright, 2009). This also led to the proliferation 1990s and 2000s, as New Labour’s attempts to of new financial tools such as mortgage-backed establish house-price Keynesianism produced an securities (Gotham, 2016) and more predatory mort- ‘asset-holding society’. By reflecting on the moralis- gage lending practices (Rolnik, 2013). ing tone of government documents during the 2000s, There have also been ‘place-specific triggers’ he shows that policy and political discourse are sig- which in the United Kingdom are understood to nificant to the construction of consumer subjectivi- include active encouragements towards home own- ties, and hence assetisation. Discourses around home ership and the denigration of renting as an inferior ownership are an important part of this, as ‘[r]espon- tenure (Gallent et al., 2017: 2211). International sible home-owners are distinguished [. . .] from their research has emphasised the centrality of home own- Other: those irresponsible and irrational individuals ership and private property to financialisation who spend “dead money” on rent and fail to get “a (Belotti and Arbaci, 2021), backed by ‘the political foot on the property ladder”’ (Langley, 2006). force of homeownership ideology’ (Rolnik, 2013) and ‘myths concerning the superiority of home-own- The state and the assetisation of housing ership over other forms of tenure’ (Kemeny, 1981: 11). Jorda et al (2016) provide evidence of UK finan- The main focus of research on assetisation has been cialisation being driven by ‘the great mortgaging’ on private actors (Christophers, 2017). While the and correlated closely with a rising share of mort- state is considered an important actor in the recent gage loans in banks’ total lending portfolios during trend towards treating land and housing as an asset the 20th century. These authors show that high levels (Aalbers, 2016; Christophers, 2013), its role remains of home ownership, far from being a fundamental under researched (Christophers, 2017; Feng et al., trait of advanced economies, have been a significant 2021). The state’s role has been conceptualised as historical prerequisite for financialised housing mar- providing the necessary conditions and licences for kets. Scholars of ‘asset-based welfare’ point towards the practices that are required in order to financialise a political, ideological and discursive shift towards markets, including policing property rights (Harvey, homes as assets (Castles, 1998; Doling and Ronald, 1982). Its role is often traced back to the deregula- 2010; Kemeny, 1980, 2005; Lennartz, 2017; Lowe, tion of mortgage markets since the 1980s (Ashton 2011; Lowe et al., 2011; Ronald and Dewilde, 2017; et al., 2016; Feng et al., 2021) or more recent finan- Schwartz and Seabrooke, 2008). This literature cial policies (Aalbers, 2019; Guironnet et al., 2016). shows that individuals’ housing demand, choice and Even if the state has simply facilitated other actors consumption are fundamental to economic restruc- (rather than acting as an agent of financialisation turing and the process of financialisation, as house- itself, see Aalbers, 2019; Harvey, 1982; Weber, holds start to ‘use their homes as ATM machines’ 2010), the processes underpinning financialisation (Fernandez and Aalbers, 2017). An important out- involve state institutions (Gotham, 2016; Rolnik, come is ‘a new relationship with housing’ expressed 2013; Wainwright, 2009: 1059), for example, through new patterns of consumption, ‘from domes- emphasises the centrality of housing policy reform tic buyers moving their capital into bricks and mor- for financialisation, particularly concerning home tar . . . to overseas buyers “parking” money in key ownership and private property. The government investment destinations’ (Gallent et al., 2017). promotion of home ownership, often presented as The consumer relationship with housing and its being rooted in the 1970s (Wijburg, 2019), is viewed significance for state restructuring is also fore- as crucial in this respect. Active work is required grounded by scholars concerned with the ‘everyday from within the state apparatus to set the right condi- financial subjectivities’ of housing consumers, par- tions for the assetisation of housing, asset-based ticularly the ‘modern investor subject’ engaged in welfare, privatised Keynesianism or house-price contemporary mortgage networks (Langley, 2006; Keynesianism. The rationalisations behind these Stirling et al. 19 processes are rarely uncovered however, and the reforms most commonly identified as significant for view from the state apparatus remains obscure. This the assetisation of housing, 1900 was chosen as the article illuminates this view in the case of the United earliest date for data collection. Analysis was subse- Kingdom, drilling into policy discourses around quently focussed on strategic documents (mostly housing consumption at crucial points in housing White and Green Papers) rather than Bills or Acts, policy history, and revealing how these shifted to since these have discursive and rhetorical depth, support new directions in macroeconomic strategy. indicating the direction of policy reform and govern- ment rationalisations, but are not constrained by the practicalities of actual implementation. As Aalbers Data and analysis (2004, quoting Priemus 2000) has observed, policy Discourse-oriented analysis, such as the archive ‘rhetoric’ (such as that used in publicly available method used here, provides a supplementary mode White Papers) can be distinct from the actual drivers of data to practice-oriented and political economy behind policy design. In order to place discourses in analysis (Fields, 2017). It is not used to evidence the the proper context of government strategising, anal- precise causal policy mechanisms by which the state ysis was extended to archive records of the policy has advanced the assetisation of housing. Policy development process leading up to publication. reform is discussed, but our focus is on the dis- These data were used to uncover the constraints and courses deployed in order to meet these ‘institutional opportunities felt within government that informed and organisational objectives’ (Fairclough, 2001: subsequent policy reform and discourse. 231). The theory is that discourses have an opera- The Parliamentary Archives are particularly use- tional force that impacts on social action; they are ful for sourcing personal documents collated by productive or, in Foucauldian terms, a discourse can Members of Parliament around the publication of be seen as an agent of power (Carabine, 2001: 268). strategic documents, including press clippings and Power in this context operates through norms of letters from lobbies, constituents or other interested behaviour which are threaded through society, con- parties. The National Archives store multiple files on veyed through discourses which offer messages any particular policy process. These contain policy about what is normal and what is not, normalising development records drawn up during the develop- certain perspectives and behaviours above others ment of strategic documents: memos, notes and let- (Carabine, 2001: 277). It is beyond the scope of this ters between members of Cabinet, ministers and article to analyse the ways these discourses might departmental civil servants, as well as informal notes come to affect housing market operation; the task which give a better ‘feel’ for the more informal side here is to identify the shifting discourses around of policy development. It should be noted that not all housing consumption, from the view of the state, in the policy proposals referenced here preceded actual relation to housing policy reform across the 20th and implementation. The iterative nature of policy 21st centuries. By analysing the way the housing design, with all its cul-de-sacs and negotiations consumer is spoken about in national housing policy between different departments, individuals and discourse, as well as how this has changed in relation interest groups, may not always result in new regula- to specific policy reforms, this article traces the rela- tory frameworks, but gives us an important insight tionship between the work of the state, and the dis- into the opportunities and constraints felt within courses surrounding housing consumption that are government, what goals were sought with and created in the process. through the housing system, and what discourses Selection of a corpus of data involved reviewing were involved in this process. In addition, we are not all relevant housing policy documents (Bills, and concerned with assessing the agency of the state for Acts of Parliament, published Command Papers, directly affecting the assetisation of housing. As ‘housing summaries’ or ‘housing returns’ data sets). Krippner (2005) observes, forces like globalisation In order to review how discourses changed in and financialisation reduce the power of the state to advance of, and in the run-up to, the 1970s and 1980s define economic and social policy. Here, the state is 20 European Urban and Regional Studies 30(1) understood as a conduit or indicator (rather than with key informers to gain an insight into more definitive originator) of social change. This is an recent housing policy development, and to supple- important distinction because the task at hand is not ment the discursive data from published white to identify the ultimate cause behind the assetisation papers (see Table 2). Interview data were also ana- of housing, but to interrogate the discourses involved lysed thematically according to the same framework and how this work has been done. as archive data. The starting points for data collection are given in Table 1. These relate to national housing policy and Findings belong to the government department responsible for housing. Reading through these documents, links The productive function of housing were traced to interactions with other government The first decades of 20th-century housing policy departments; these were particularly with the prime were characterised by political pressure for govern- ministers’ Office, the Treasury and Cabinet. ment intervention, with widespread slum conditions Christophers (2017) describes how in the United of increasing public concern (Gallent and Tewdwr- Kingdom, the state and its processes are highly cen- Jones, 2007). With the provision of housing largely tralised, with the prime minister’s office being atypi- coordinated by private builders, it was ‘moral obli- cally significant for directing ministerial departments gation’ that forced the hand of government towards and other arms of the state. This was found here, subsidised housebuilding from 1911 onwards with policy relevant to housing often being devel- (Saunders, 1990: 26). Another strategic concern oped between the prime minister’s office and the expressed in the policy of subsidised housebuilding, Treasury. particularly during and after the First World War, Analysis applied Braun and Clark’s (2006) frame- was the function that housing might play in ‘rebal- work for qualitative thematic analysis, since this ancing’ the national economy, serving as a device to shows how discourses and thematic patterns work generate an efficient distribution of workers return- across a broad population of interlocutors or respond- ing from serving in the war. In August 1914, the ents. This framework offers a practical guide for Local Government Board wrote that finance made identifying discursive themes and relationships available to local authorities for housebuilding ‘shall between themes. Analysis resulted in distinguishing be utilised for the joint purposes of providing and the ultimate strategic goal of policy development improving housing accommodation for the working from the organisational mechanisms deployed in classes, and of preventing or mitigating unemploy- support of these goals – the pathways for action cho- ment in the building trades’. This frames housing sen, the taxes abolished, subsidy levels raised – and policy as a mechanism for tackling two distinct but the way the consumer relationship with housing was equally important goals: providing accommodation, framed discursively therein. In this article, policy and mitigating unemployment. A third goal was ‘strategy’ (the strategic goals of housing policy geographical: design) is thematically distinguished from these pol- icy ‘devices’. However, since data points coalesce When the War is over, soldiers who previously worked around specific time periods in the long run of hous- as agricultural labourers will be making up their mind ing policy history, the results of analysis are not pre- whether they will return to the land or seek occupation sented thematically but rather according to time elsewhere . . . One of the factors which has driven men sequence, for the sake of clarity. from the land in the past has been the lack of houses, One fundamental limitation of using public and unless this is remedied no other steps to render country life attractive can succeed. records offices to source documentary data is the ‘20-year rule’, which means that documents are Housebuilding is framed here as a policy device to available only after 20 years, and that there is a fun- help meet the strategic goal of attracting workers to damental inconsistency between historical and con- different locations across the country. But the success temporary data. We therefore conducted interviews Stirling et al. 21 Table 1. Corpus of archival data (distinct from ‘source material’) was defined as follows. Date Title Type of document Notes Location 1911–1914 Housing and Town Planning memoranda Memoranda dated 1911, ParliPapers 1913, 1914 1911–1919 Lloyd George papers on housing Letters Neglect of home affairs by the war Parliamentary Archives committee; Housing as part of the war and reconstruction effort 1922–1923 Bonar Law papers on housing Letters Parliamentary Archives 1933 Opinion on housing and the war effort (Lord Beaverbrook) Press clippings Stresses ‘taking care of home’: food Parliamentary Archives will mean more than guns, policy of isolation, higher wages and so on. 1933 Particulars of Slum Clearance – Particulars of slum clearance programme Report on programme ParliPapers 1934 Policy development for the 1934 White Paper on slum clearance Draft White Papers, Letters, National Archives notes, briefing papers 1934 White Paper on slum clearance White Paper development ParliPapers/National Archives 1945 White Paper on Housing Cmnd paper (The government’s policy and ParliPapers organisation for carrying it into effect) 1945 Policy development for the 1945 White Paper on Housing Letters, notes, briefing National Archives papers, Draft White Paper 1953 ‘Houses. The Next Step’ (MoHLG [Ministry of Housing and Local ParliPapers Government]. 1953. Houses – The Next Step, Cmnd 8996. London: HMSO) 1943–1956 Housing policy development (house of lords papers) Ministry Papers and The case for home ownership and Parliamentary Archives pamphlets the cost of housebuilding 1955 General election 1955 Pamphlets, manifestos Parliamentary Archives 1958 ‘House purchase: Proposed government scheme’ Programme outline ‘The government have decided to ParliPapers enable more people to buy their own homes. The way to do this is by increasing the amount of money available for lending on mortgage’. 1960 Housing in England and Wales Cmnd paper ParliPapers 1963 Letter on the 1965 Housing Bill Letter Parliamentary Archives 1963 Policy development for the 1963 Housing Policy White Paper Letters, notes, briefing National Archives papers, press clipping 1963 Housing Policy White Paper ‘Housing’ White Paper development ParliPapers/Parliamentary Archives 1965 White Paper on the national housing programme 1965 to 1970 White Paper development National Archives 1965 Policy development for the 1965 White Paper Letters National Archives 1966 Help towards home ownership Cmnd paper – details of the ParliPapers scheme 1969 London housing Consortium study on housing improvement: ‘Old Houses Study group minutes and National Archives into New Homes’ notes (ontinued) 22 European Urban and Regional Studies 30(1) Table 1. (Continued) Date Title Type of document Notes Location 1970 Building Societies Association Study on urban redevelopment Study group minutes and On building societies’ participation in National Archives notes, commissioned Study renewal/‘A study on the maintenance of demand and a proposal for the cellular renewal of twilight zones’ 1970–1971 ‘A Fair Deal for Housing’ Cmnd 4728 Cmnd paper – strategy ParliPapers 1973 Better homes. The next priorities Cmnd paper ParliPapers Draft White Paper and policy development for 1973 Better Homes White Letters, Q&A briefing, National Archives Paper Drafts of the White Paper with notes 1973 White Paper on housing and land: ‘Widening the choice: the next steps in Cmnd paper ParliPapers housing’ 1973 Draft White Paper and policy development for 1973 Widening the Choice National Archives White Paper 1977 ‘Policy for the Inner Cities’ (Cmnd. 6845) Cmnd paper ParliPapers 1976 Housing Policy. A consultative document Result of a housing policy review ParliPapers starting in 1975, initially confined to financial issues 1973–1977–1978 Policy development for Inner City Areas policy Press clippings, Letters Prototype Housing Action Areas, National Archives with LAs, meeting minutes, Construction reports 1977 Public Expenditure White Paper – housing chapter Points arising from the WP, National Archives Graph on investment in LA dwellings 1982 White Paper on improvement of the housing stock: ‘Housing Improvement Draft WP and note National Archives Policy’ 1980 Review of Housing Subsidies Speech on owner National Archives occupation and housing loans 1980 on Right-to-Buy Press, publicity and reviews Home ownership constructed as a Parliamentary archives ‘natural desire’ 1983 Building societies – a new framework Green Paper ParliPapers 1984–1987 Housing policy development (in advance of 1987 white paper) ‘Housing Letters and reports National Archives strategy/Scenarios for housing’ 1985 Home Improvement – a new approach Consultation document Encouraging owners to help ParliPapers themselves 1985 Public Expenditure White Paper – housing chapter Draft housing chapter National Archives 1987 ‘Housing: the government’s proposals’ Cmnd 214. Cmnd paper ParliPapers 1989 Public Expenditure White Paper – housing chapter – New Financial Regime Draft housing chapter National Archives 1994 ‘Our future homes. Opportunity, choice, responsibility. The government’s Cmnd. Policy statement ParliPapers housing policies for England and Wales’ (ontinued) Stirling et al. 23 Table 1. (Continued) Date Title Type of document Notes Location 1996 Green paper ‘Household growth: Where shall we live?’ Green Paper ParliPapers 1998 ‘A new contract for welfare – Safeguarding social security’ Strategy ParliPapers 1999 ‘Our Towns and Cities: The Future’ urban white paper Cmnd paper ParliPapers 2000 ‘Quality and Choice: A Decent Home for All’ Green Paper Internet 2002 Government response to a select committee report on affordable homes Government response ParliPapers 2002 Government response to Housing Committee report on the Draft Housing Government response ParliPapers Bill 2002 Housing benefit amendment Amendment ParliPapers 2002 Housing benefit amendment 2003 Amendment ParliPapers 2002 ‘Sharing Homes: A Discussion Paper’ Discussion paper ParliPapers 2003 ‘Sustainable communities’ Action programme, marking Internet ‘a step-change in our policies’ 2003 Housing Bill – consultation on draft legislation Consultation on draft ParliPapers legislation 2011 Laying the foundations Government strategy Internet 2017 ‘Fixing our broken housing market’ Interweb/hard copy 24 European Urban and Regional Studies 30(1) Table 2. Full list of interviewees. No. Interviewee position 1 Developer (Executive Director of Property Development) 2 Residential market research (Senior Research Analyst) 3 Estate agency professional association (CEO) 4 Estate agency professional association (Chairman) 5 Architect (Partner) 6 Surveyor (Director) 7 Housing economist (consultant) 8 Housing policy consultant 9 Housing policy consultant 10 Housing market research (research manager) agricultural cottager may have to move; and when he of this device rested on a particular consumer rela- does he must be given full compensation for his garden. tionship with housing, in which workers could be But, broadly speaking, the farm labourer’s cottage is ‘attracted’ by the housing offer. This framing of his home, and should remain so till his garden and his housing consumption is illustrated in a 1917 memo- allotment no longer suffice, and he moves to a small randum of the Reconstruction Committee, which holding of the larger kind; when he may leave the old illustrates how ‘attractive’ housing was to play a part home to his son. in national economic strategy, drawing the agricul- tural labourer towards productive work in the The attractions of housing to the agricultural country: labourer are framed here in terms of pleasantness, As counter-attractions to the magnetism of the town, comfort, pleasures and ‘forms of happiness’; as an we must for the most part look to pleasures, to forms of object of policy, housing is understood in relation to happiness, and to sources of income which are denied the consumer’s ‘preferences’ with regard to his the dweller in most of our big industrial centres. Of ‘home’, and to security of tenure. It is the labourer, these a detailed discussion would be out of place here, rather than the house, which is expressed as an but in his housing we can, to a great extent, give the ‘asset’. Housing services are exchanged for workers’ returning soldier most of the very same advantages he ‘knowledge of the soil and of the behaviour of the had in the town, and several in addition which he could land’, incentivising them to remain in one location not get in the town. He can have more, not less so that farmers do not need to ‘change men unneces- accommodation, because the cost of the site represented sarily’. While housing may have functioned as an so infinitesimal a sum in the weekly rent. He can have asset for a relatively small number of individual a proper water supply; he can have good sanitary arrangements; he can have a range in the scullery, so owners at this time, within national housing policy that his living room need not be unbearably hot – unless the function of housing for consumers was framed as he prefers to live in the scullery’ and, above all, he can the housing services it offered – put to the service of have ample ground for garden, pig, and poultry [. . .] a policy strategy for effective agricultural production Security of tenure, the ability to remain in the same and economic balance. house and make it the family home, this, perhaps the This productive function of housebuilding was chief desire the agricultural worker [. . .] there will be drawn on throughout the interwar years. The less tendency for farmers to change their hands; for in Conservative government that came to power in itself the knowledge of the soil and of the behaviour of 1935 announced their success with a housing pro- the land in different weather, etc., which the labourer gramme that was the ‘Key to British recovery’, as an acquired from long experience of the same far, is an interview with Lord Beaverbrook (owner of the asset of great value; and no good farmer will want to change his men unnecessarily. Of course, even the Evening Standard and later Minister of State, of Stirling et al. 25 Supply and of War Production in Churchill’s not fall, and subsidy remained an essential part of Cabinet) illustrates, their upkeep into the 1950s. In 1947, the govern- ment commissioned a report on the subject. This framed the rising cost of housebuilding, relative to Things are going well in this country. The Government is strong and the country is recovering. What is the the beneficial effects for the national economy, as reason? Housebuilding. Just that. The burst of activity out of balance. The appointed Committee of Enquiry in the housebuilding industry lies at the back of the felt that this warranted a revision in public spending whole of this welcome wave of recovery. No form of on housebuilding: expenditure spreads its effects so quickly through every branch of industry as housebuilding. None A large part of the cost today is being borne by subsidies touches the whole economic structure in the same way. . . . [which] will increase cumulatively by about £3.3 It is not only a question of a boom in the brick business million per annum for so long as subsidies remain at or cement. There are also electric appliances of every the 1947 level. While we agree that housing must have kind, electric wire (with a reaction on the copper high priority among the claims on the available national market), paint, timber, wallpaper, nails, slates, and so resources, we consider that in any review of the housing forth. Then when you put the roof on and get the new programme the financial implications must be borne tenants in, there is furniture to be got. Don’t imagine prominently in mind they bring in old furniture. They do not. And the further out of town you build these houses the better it is. For The support that public housebuilding could then the tenants must buy a motor-car if they do not give to national economic growth was seen as lim- have one already. It is my belief that you would do well ited relative to its rising costs, which were viewed in America too, if you embarked on a big housing as unsustainable. Nevertheless, both Labour and programme instead of squandering your money in the Conservatives supported a continued subsidised other and less fruitful directions housebuilding programme, providing evidence of a post-war consensus. This was propagated by a dis- The use of housebuilding for this end puts hous- course on housing conditions as the main feature of ing policy squarely in the realm of the ‘post-war individuals’ relationship with their housing, empha- consensus’ (Dutton, 1991; Kavanagh and Morris, sising the particular needs of married couples and 1994). In British history, this is used to describe the families, and framing ‘better housing’ as the most consensus between both Labour and Conservative important outcome of housing policy. As might be governments throughout the 1940s and 1950s on expected of post-war housing policy, the repair of maintenance of the welfare state, the mixed econ- damaged and slum housing is addressed, but house- omy and other Keynesian demand-side measures in building is given priority, underpinned by order to ensure full employment (Rollings, 1996). ‘betterment’: The use of housing as a productive element of budg- etary policy was interrupted by the Second World The present demand for housing [. . .] has not in fact the War. But after the war, this strategic goal supposedly same relentless pressure behind it [as the demand forged a political consensus on the merits of budget- which arose at the end of the last war] [and] must come ary policy (including direct public investment into from a rise in the standard of living which would housing) as a macroeconomic resource. probably have to take the form not merely of By 1945, with housing policy tangled in the fall- compulsory slum clearance [. . .] but an active desire on out of war, policymakers stated that ‘The first objec- the part of people who already have a reasonable house tive of the Government is to use for housing all the to get something better productive resources of the nation that can be spared and so to provide the largest number of houses in the Great concern is expressed about the number of shortest possible time’. Subsidies were required to newly married couples, and giving them access to encourage building at scale, but intended to be tem- ‘separate dwellings’. Discourse on consumers porary, to achieve a strategy of ‘reduce[d] building takes a different tone to that around the ‘attractive- costs, as quickly as possible’. But building costs did ness’ of labourers’ cottages in the interwar years; 26 European Urban and Regional Studies 30(1) nevertheless, it still centres on the physical condition (Chancellor Rab Butler quoted in Evans 1992: 94). of housing services as the priority of the housing An election promise of 300,000 homes a year ‘sat consumer subject; there is barely a mention of tenure awkwardly’ next to commitments to reduce public and none of home ownership as investment. The spending but was in fact vital to its success (Evans division of tasks between public and private enter- 1992: 91). Reductions would eventually be achieved prise goes undetailed; the task is simply to unleash in the longer term, by raising public and private rents the building of houses. and by pursuing owner occupation: ‘sponsoring After the Conservatives gained power in 1951 home ownership by making renting less affordable this seemed to continue, with a 3-year building plan was a part of a party-political strategy which viewed drawn up to accelerate housebuilding to 300,000 a property owning democracy as the future bastion annually by 1954. These figures were intended to be of Conservative votes’ (Evans 1992: 93). objectives rather than limits: If the subsidy increase of 1952 has been over- looked, it is likely because of the U-turn that fol- There will be no arbitrary limitation by an arbitrary lowed: a shift in the mid 1950s took subsidies programme of 175,000 or 200,000 or any other figure entirely away from general and towards ‘special’ of houses a year. There is no restriction; No rigid needs. The Chancellor reported that a major adap- ceiling; No artificial limit. And the quicker you build, tation in the direction of housing policy was ‘inevi- the more there will be to build. table’; by 1954, the government were engaged in ‘Operation Round-up’, which by 1955 involved In proposing the scheme to cabinet, Minister of complete withdrawal of general needs subsidy. The Housing and Local Government, Harold Macmillan, same government that had doubled down on the promised that ‘If I can do better, I will’. post-war commitment to socially financed housing promptly kick-started its residualisation (Forrest and The monetary function of housing Murie, 1983). Alongside this U-turn, our analysis has identified a significant shift in policy discourse The strategic goal of housing policy during this surrounding the consumer relationship with housing, period has been a topic of debate. In the context of outlined below. rising costs, an expensive public housebuilding pro- gramme was pursued. Holmans’ (1987) reading of Significant changes in 1953. Contrary to Holmans’ the commitment to subsidised housing emphases the and Evans’ readings of housing policy strategy, context of rising interest rates, used to restrain infla- records suggest that initially, the 1952 commitment tion, and meaning local authorities faced higher pay- to subsidised housebuilding was sought for the same ments on the loans that financed their housebuilding. reason such schemes had been pursued in previous According to Holmans, the goal of subsidy increase decades: in order to support the building industry, was to offset this effect and protect local authority employment levels and the economy at large. These funding. The expansion of public housebuilding by faced risks due to a shortage of steel, meaning that the 1951–1955 Conservative government is here housebuilding once again provided a useful produc- posited as one of the most noteworthy episodes in tive resource in support to the national economy. The British housing history: ‘This action deserves more 3-year housebuilding programme was justified in attention than it has generally received . . . How and these terms: why the decision to protect the finances of housing in this way was taken in 1952 has attracted little It would be fatal if fear of unemployment caused a comment’ (Holmans 1987: 152). slowing up of work or an unwillingness to recruit Evans (1992) argues instead that the strategic apprentices. On the other hand, we have a great chance goal was withdrawal of housing subsidy. In the short of pressing forward with those forms of building which term, this relied on increasing subsidies to stimulate do not require any large quantity of steel . . . These are housebuilding in a high-cost vacuum, ‘until it housebuilding, conversions of houses into flats, house- repairing and general repairing. became possible to free the house-building market’ Stirling et al. 27 Once again, this supports the thesis on the post- investment, individual consumer investment into war consensus, in which both Labour and housing was framed as a means of achieving the Conservative governments saw public investment – same benefits for the economy, but one that was in this case through housing – as a resource to ease more attuned to an increasingly globalised world. unemployment and for reflation of the economy. Private housing consumption was a means of eco- The conventional reading of this post-war con- nomic reflation that avoided the risk of inflation, sensus is that investment of public budgets for full raised living costs and devaluation. The privately employment was pursued throughout the 1940s, owned house therefore served a very specific func- 1950s and 1960s. This sees a ‘collectivist macroeco- tion within macroeconomic organisation, transfer- nomic hegemony’ existing until the 1970s, when ring the cost of investment into the economy (through politicians started to question the state in public life housing) from the public to the homeowner. (Muller, 1996). This is supported by housing studies But in the field of housing policy, this macroeco- literature that points towards neoliberalisation – the nomic shift required a reconfiguration of the housing ‘reflex reliance on markets to determine the alloca- consumer subject as an investor subject. The first tion of resources’ (Berry, 2014) – as the dawn of discursive utterance on this topic identified in this public housing residualisation and the most signifi- research came from the Building Societies cant turning point in 20th-century housing policy. Association (BSA) which in 1948 emphasised the But Rollings (1996) presents us with a very dif- cost of public housebuilding and made ‘The Case for ferent reading of the post-war consensus, in which it Home Ownership’ along these lines: ceased after the 1951 election. Socially coordinated The man who buys a house [. . .] offers a threefold investment, flowing through the exchequer and the relief to the State and the local authority. In the first public sector borrowing requirement (PSBR) started place, the community is relieved of any obligation to to be understood as having inflationary tendencies. provide a house for him and thus both the State and the With its capacity to undermine confidence in Sterling local authority are saved the considerable sums [. . .] and the Sterling-Dollar exchange rate, inflation Finally, the capital cost of the house is provided as a could make the pound weak in relation to other cur- result of voluntary private saving by investors in rencies and weaken Britain’s international trading building societies and the capital which would position. It was during the early 1950s that the otherwise have had to be provided by the Government Cabinet began to follow this theory, and to prioritise becomes available for other purposes exchange rates by avoiding inflation (Rollings, 1996). By this logic, avoiding inflation would In addition, the BSA framed the act of housing require that social investment into the productive consumption as ‘gradually acquiring a substantial economy be replaced with private investment. While investment and a security on which he could readily public investment clearly continued after 1951, borrow’. This presents a discursive shift in the con- Rollings (1996) has argued that this marks the date sumer relationship with housing, emphasising the from which budgetary policy would be pursued only function that housing could play for individuals as a after international considerations were borne in means towards savings and investment, and the mind. It represents a shift in macroeconomic think- function this could serve in turn for reducing state ing that redressed the strategic goals of the various housing expenditure. This new framing of the con- government ministries. sumer relationship with housing was deployed as a For the 1951–1955 government, reducing public device through which it might be aligned with the budgets was necessary to serve the requirements of wider goals of macroeconomic restructuring. international competition. Within housing policy, Analysis of policy development in the early 1950s this could be deployed through cuts in subsidies, not reveals that the discursive device of housing as a only by retracting the general needs housebuilding personal asset was deployed within legislative, fiscal programme but also through the expansion of private and policy proposals that aimed to incentivise pri- ownership. By reducing the need for public vate investment into the economy, through house 28 European Urban and Regional Studies 30(1) forms of social investment promoted by local purchase. Policy development for the 1953 housing authorities and over productive investment promoted White Paper noted that ‘the owner-occupier costs the by the nationalised industries . . . To concede this point Exchequer nothing, and on every new house pri- would be to imperil the whole of the Government’s vately owned the Exchequer saves a subsidy of interest-rate policy; and the Committee have therefore £770’. In that same year, work started on a ‘house [recommended] that the Government will be prepared purchase scheme’, to be agreed with the BSA, to to defend discrimination in favour of the building lubricate mortgage lending: societies as a deliberate act of social policy and to resist, regardless of the circumstances, pressure by the The main obstacle today to an extension of home local authorities and the nationalised industries for a ownership is not the rate of interest, nor the need to put 28 corresponding concession. (emphasis added) down a deposit, but the difficulty of getting a loan on mortgage because the demand on building societies This excerpt illustrates the way that private exceeds their available resources. The simple and investment into the housing system (through mort- effective remedy is [. . .] making Government money gage lending to owner-occupiers) was prioritised as available to increase the flow of mortgages for house 23 part of national economic (interest-rate) policy, and purchase. was therefore given preferential subsidy to other social policy areas. While defended as a social This strategy was supported by discourses around (rather than economic) policy, the device of incenti- home ownership as investment, as illustrated in a vising ownership was de facto an element of macro- 1954 press conference: economic strategy. While policy lag meant that the tax treatment of home ownership was not revised There is hardly a better form of saving for the whole until 1963, ‘New thinking’ was requested from civil family than by investing in the home which the whole family uses. The Minister believes that there is little servants to encourage individuals to invest in hous- doubt that many more families will buy homes of their ing by strengthening the investment benefits accru- own if the financial side is made easier ing to owners. Proposals in 1958 included reduced transaction taxes; abolition of Schedule ‘A’ tax on Published in 1956, the scheme was controversial owner-occupiers; ‘pressure and/or incentives for largely because the interest rate at which building local authorities to sell council houses [. . . and . . .] societies could borrow from government was lower the offer of 100 per cent mortgages’. By strength- than that for other social investments, such as for ening the attractions of housing-based equity to con- transport, fuel, power, schools, roads, health ser- sumers, policymakers aimed to shift tenure vices or mortgages for home ownership funded by preferences to align with the logic of monetary local authority finance. A justification for limiting (rather than budgetary) policy. the subsidy to building societies was sought. Suggestions ranged from ‘political grounds’ to 27 The assetisation of housing: from administrative practicability. By 1958, the deci- individual to institutional investment sion was defended on the basis that building socie- ties provided a service that was ‘country-wide in its While resting on the demand for mortgage credit, extent and uniform in its application’, but this was the 2008 financial crash was a crisis of macroeco- only half of the problem: nomic organisation. Its threats, like plummeting spending on goods, services and other business I do not know how convincing you will find [this]. But investments in the real, productive economy, were you will observe that it does not answer the criticism macroeconomic. The response was also macroeco- that the Government are proposing to give higher nomic, with the Bank of England lowering interest priority to house purchase than to other forms of social rates to reduce the cost of borrowing and encour- investment – simply because there is no answer to this age circulation of investment. With interest rates criticism . . . [the charge is] that the Government are so low (reduced to 0.5% in 2009) maintaining this giving priority to the purchase of houses . . . over other Stirling et al. 29 It became even harder for people to actually buy homes strategy required further unconventional monetary and then one of the ways to reduce or control that, other policy. Quantitative easing (QE) was intended to than, you know, increase in interest rates, is to try and give banks greater liquidity to encourage further increase the supply of housing. Not necessarily causing lending (House of Commons, 2016), a financial- prices to fall because that would have the same issue in ised solution to stimulating real economic growth. terms of government policies, rates and all that stuff. In August 2016, the Bank of England’s Monetary But to make it grow at a steady pace. (I8) Policy Committee voted to extend QE by £25 bil- lion to £140 billion, cut the benchmark interest rate This illustrates a shift in housing policy – from to 0.25% and introduce the Term Funding Scheme emphasising tenure (and particularly the invest- (TFS; House of Commons, 2016). Its aim was sim- ment benefits associated with ownership), to ilar to previous initiatives; it would ensure that emphasising supply – a shift that was determined banks passed lower interest rates to end users, with by the broader macroeconomic strategy of govern- up to £100 billion ‘newly printed money’ provid- ment. Increased housing supply was pursued across ing cheap loans to commercial banks linked to the all tenures. In London, the Greater London amount they lent to firms and households (House Authority’s response was to create more land avail- of Commons, 2016). ability and density through the planning system: This strategy, based on the vehicle of debt, was ‘pushing back garden development, town centre geared towards macroeconomic (rather than hous- regeneration, demolishing council estates, . . . get- ing) goals but created the context for a post-crisis ting as much density as possible onto those sites, rush in effective demand for home ownership. The [getting] local authorities in areas surrounding status that housing had achieved as an asset rela- London to take on higher housing targets’ (I10). As tive to other investments during previous decades a policy device, densification has characterised UK meant that boosts to investment in general ushered housing and planning reform since (MHCLG, large amounts of capital into housing specifically. 2020); one way to address affordability without QE and TFS drew demand away from bonds and also undermining the status of housing as an asset. equities and meant that physical assets would Another housing policy device that could be used offer better returns, all contributing to the status of to raise supply of housing without bolstering or housing as an asset and the declining affordability undermining house prices was the institutional pro- of house purchase. The low-interest rate environ- vision of rental property. This had the potential to ment made large mortgages increasingly afforda- bring in the scale of investment required for large- ble and accelerated price inflation (Hedlund et al., scale housebuilding in urban centres, given rising 2017). According to our interviewees, this was land values: ‘build to rent is bringing investment to something acknowledged by policymakers at the get more stuff built; what other ways can you get time, but seen as unavoidable (I8). stuff built, when people can’t pay?’ (I8). Under pres- Thus, while alleviated credit constraints had sure to increase access to dwellings without damag- implications for housing affordability, it was also ing a precarious national economy, institutional seen as central to the strategy for economic recov- investment into housing would become the object of ery: a rush to assets and rising house prices were an explicit government strategy. Government com- bound up in the engine of growth selected by gov- missioned a review to investigate whether the rented ernment. Any housing policy geared towards greater sector could offer potential investment opportunities access or affordability would need to sit within this of interest to large-scale institutional investors, and strategy. One such device, sitting happily in a low- to consider the potential for attracting such invest- interest rate, high-debt environment, was increasing ment into new homes for private rent (Montague, the supply of housing in order to put downwards 2012). This model for investing into the housing pressure on house prices. From 2010 onwards, the economy forms a significant element of the 2017 issue of raising housing supply came to dominate housing policy White Paper, which develops devices housing policy design: to reduce the constraints of the build to rent delivery 30 European Urban and Regional Studies 30(1) model, and to shift incentives from individual to in macroeconomic policy. Individual consumers (and institutional landlords (DCLG, 2017). their relationship with housing, or demand for certain Once again, this shift in housing policy has tenures) contribute monthly rental payments towards required a reconditioning of the consumer demand the continued assetisation of housing. for housing. Support for the function of housing as an asset for individuals shifted to include support for Conclusion housing as an asset for institutions and corporate bodies. As well as incentives for institutions them- Through analysis of housing policy discourse selves, this has required reframing the benefits of around the consumer subject and relationship with renting to individual consumers of housing. housing, this article shows how this has been Montague (2012), for example, advocated a ‘renting reconditioned to support new directions in macro- plus’ model that would compensate for the loss of economic strategy throughout the 20th and 21st ownership with other attractive features particular to centuries. One conclusion is that the assetisation of renting, and specialist services like concierges, laun- housing in the United Kingdom was pursued dry, repairs, delivery and grocery services. The mar- through housing policy reform well before the ket-level adaptation to this shift has involved the 1980s, supported through shifting policy dis- production of institutional, amenity-heavy, and com- courses around the consumer subject. munal models of rent as an aspirational tenure. By Research has shown that financialised economic contrast, small private landlords started to be framed activity rose sharply in the 1980s (Krippner, 2005) unfavourably in housing policy discourse. One of and has reported on the ‘investor subject’ that is part their few mentions in the White Paper characterises of this transition (Watson, 2010), emerging since them as predatory: expansion of the mortgage market (Langley, 2006). This literature and the concept of financialisation have tended to overshadow other factors in the 20th- [. . .] high demand and low supply is creating opportunities for exploitation and abuse: unreasonable century housebuilding boom. We have found that in letting agents’ fees, unfair terms in leases, landlords the United Kingdom, discourses on the investor sub- letting out dangerous, overcrowded properties. In ject emerged years before, and were related to the short, it’s becoming harder to rent a safe, secure macroeconomic concerns of government, rather than property. (p. 10) the concerns of housing policy itself. By drawing on new archive data and tracing housing policy strategy The white paper is notable because it lacks discur- and discourses over a longer period than is usually sive distinction between home ownership and renting. considered, this article shows that the prospect for Just as, in the early 1950s, housing policy shifted its housing consumers to build equity through home focus from supply and the condition of housing to the ownership was deployed as part of macroeconomic balance of tenure, 2017 marked a juncture at which strategy from the 1950s onwards. This challenges a the balance of tenure receded. This represented a dis- tendency to frame housing policy as moving from a cursive shift away from the asset function of housing Keynesian post-war consensus (during the late 1940s for individuals and households. The consumer rela- to the 1970s) to a post-Fordist regime, as a reaction tionship with housing was reframed as ‘the most basic ‘to the 1970s oil shock and global recession’ of human needs’ (p. 9); no encouragements were (Waterhout et al., 2013: 143, see also Crouch, 2009). made to buy over renting, nor any investment-related While it may be true that ‘Homes until the liberalisa- benefits to housing mentioned. However, this shift tion of the banks in the 1980s were just that, places does not undermine, but continues to reinforce the where people lived’ (Lowe, 2011: 204), the housing salience of housing as an asset for corporate entities. It system had already been placed on its trajectory marks another juncture at which policy discourse towards assetisation decades before; more a case of around housing tenure and the housing consumer sub- policy accretion than a radical shift towards a neolib- ject has been reconditioned to support new directions eral paradigm. Stirling et al. 31 In addition, we have shown that assetisation of Funding housing is not supported solely by the high levels of The author(s) received no financial support for the private home ownership that emerged in the mid- research, authorship and/or publication of this article. 20th century (Jorda et al., 2016; Rolnik, 2013) but could also be buttressed by rental tenures (Fields, ORCID iD 2017, 2018; Belotti and Arbaci, 2021) and an aspira- Phoebe Stirling https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3619- tional renter subject. Assetisation is therefore not lim- ited by any particular consumer relationship with housing, or by a system of accumulation grounded in Notes house-price Keynesianism and asset-based welfare 1. Parliamentary Archives F/177/1/5 – F/178/1. Lloyd provision. Rather, assetisation in the housing system George Papers. Memorandum of the Reconstruction is a flexible process (Wijburg, 2019), centred simply Committee 21 August 1914. around private investment into housing. This indi- 2. Parliamentary Archives F/177/1/5 – F/178/1. cates the significance of assetisation beyond the Lloyd George Papers. ‘Memorandum on Housing indebtedness of individual households (Langley, in England and Wales’, by the Reconstruction 2021) and has implications for the housing invest- Committee, May 1917, p. 3. ment landscapes we see around us today. As house 3. Memorandum of the Reconstruction Committee, prices rise above the level that incomes can carry June 1917: ‘Housing in England and Wales: Memorandum by Mr Leslie Scott – Considerations them, some predict a shift away from neoliberal poli- upon Mr Rowntree’s Memorandum (R.C. No.89) and cymaking and its assetisation of housing: ‘the market Lord Salisbury’s Memorandum’ p. 11. will need to be re-embedded in society at some point’ 4. Parliamentary Archives: BBK/L/61: Article by Lord (Fernandez and Aalbers, 2017: 155). But this position Beaverbrook in the Toledo Blade (A Newspaper in is undermined if assetisation depends less on housing Ohio, U.S.), 12 April 1935. as an asset for individual consumers, and more on an 5. National Archives 315/45 ‘The Office for the Minister indiscriminate drive for private investment into the of Reconstruction – Draft White Paper on Housing’: housing system to support macroeconomic goals. Draft White Paper, section of text removed from the The central implication of these findings is that final version. housing policy should be understood within housing, 6. National Archives 315/45 ‘The Office for the Minister urban and regional studies as a macroeconomic of Reconstruction – Draft White Paper on Housing’: Draft White Paper, section of text removed from the resource before it is an element of social policy. The final version. priorities of the Treasury regarding Britain’s strate- 7. Parliamentary Archives SAM/G/25-29 – The Liberal gic economic and global position have, thus far, pro- Party Housing Committee Interim Report, 1951. vided the organising principles according to which 8. Parliamentary Archives SAM/G/25-29 – ‘The Cost housing policy and discourse are aligned before of Housebuilding’ – First Report of the Committee housing-based goals have been pursued. Housing of Inquiry appointed by the Minister of Health. policy and its discourses about the consumer subject Appointed in June 1947 and reporting in 1948. have become functionally integrated within wider 9. Parliamentary Archives SAM/G/25-29 – ‘The Cost macroeconomic goals. Any intervention intending to of Housebuilding’ – First Report of the Committee strengthen the social function of housing, achieve of Inquiry appointed by the Minister of Health. greater supply or greater affordability, needs to Appointed in June 1947 and reporting in 1948. 10. National Archives 315/45 ‘The Office for the Minister acknowledge the historical scale of this entangle- of Reconstruction – Draft White Paper on Housing’. ment and of its associated interests. 11. National Archives 315/45 ‘The Office for the Minister of Reconstruction – Draft White Paper on Declaration of conflicting interests Housing’. The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest 12. National Archives 315/45 ‘The Office for the with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication Minister of Reconstruction – Draft White Paper on of this article. Housing’. 32 European Urban and Regional Studies 30(1) 13. National Archives HLG 101/504 Housing Policy Housing and Local Government and Minister for Committee: constitution and general correspondence, Welsh Affairs. Extract from Minister’s Speech – 23 January 1952. 24. National Archives HLG 117/140, Scheme for govern- 14. National Archives CAB 129/48/43, The Building ment guarantees to cover larger percentage advances: Industry and the Housing Programme Memorandum discussions with local authority and building society by the Minister of Housing and Local Government, associations; points from which the Minister may like Printed for the Cabinet. 14 December 1951. to speak at the Press Conference on Tuesday, 4 May 15. National Archives CAB 129/77/16 Economic (1954). Situation: Housing Policy. Memorandum by the 25. National Archives CAB 21/4421 Housing Policy 1953–1960, ‘Home Ownership’ Joint Memorandum Chancellor of the Exchequer, presented to Cabinet, 3 by Secretary of State for Scotland and Minister of September 1955. Housing and Local Government and Minster for 16. National Archives CAB 129/77/16 Economic Welsh Affairs (July 1958). Situation: Housing Policy. Memorandum by the 26. National Archives T 233/1704 House purchase and Chancellor of the Exchequer, presented to Cabinet, 3 housing bill (Treasury finance division) 1959. September 1955. 27. National Archives CAB 21/4421 Housing Policy 17. National Archives CAB 129/68/30 The Rate of 1953–1960, ‘Home Ownership’ Joint Memorandum Housing Subsidies, Memorandum by the Minister by Secretary of State for Scotland and Minister of of Housing and Local Government, presented to Housing and Local Government and Minster for Cabinet, Dated 29 May 1954. Welsh Affairs (July 1958). 18. National Archives CAB 129/77/16 Economic 28. National Archives CAB 21/4421 Housing Policy Situation: Housing Policy. Memorandum by the 1953–1960, ‘Home Ownership’ Joint Memorandum Chancellor of the Exchequer, presented to Cabinet, 3 by Secretary of State for Scotland and Minister of September 1955. Housing and Local Government and Minster for 19. National Archives CAB 129/48/43, The Building Welsh Affairs (July 1958). Industry and the Housing Programme Memorandum 29. National Archives CAB 21/4421 Housing Policy by the Minister of Housing and Local Government, 1953–1960, Prime Minister’s Personal Minute from Printed for the Cabinet. 14 December 1951. the Minister of Housing and Local Government, 20. Parliamentary Archives SAM/G/25-29, ‘The Case dated 3 April 1958. for Home Ownership’, memorandum by the Building 30. Until 1963, homeowners paid ‘Schedule A’ income Societies Association, dated 30 December 1948. tax on the imputed income afforded by the value of 21. 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The assetisation of housing: A macroeconomic resource

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SAGE
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© The Author(s) 2022
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0969-7764
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1461-7145
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10.1177/09697764221082621
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Abstract

The most significant episode in the assetisation of housing (underpinning its financialisation) is often understood to be the economic restructuring that took place during the 1980s – particularly deregulation of the banking sector and credit liberalisation. Research has reported on the housing ‘investor subject’ that emerged during this time, as an integral part of the transition towards financialised economies. This article provides new evidence about the housing consumer subject, and its place in this transition, by drilling into UK housing policy history and its discourses around the consumer relationship with housing. Using archive data from the Parliamentary and National Archives alongside interviews with key informers, we illustrate three cases of housing policy development in which the consumer demand for, and relationship with, housing is discursively reconditioned. We conclude that the housing investor subject was pursued in housing policy reform and its discourses well before the 1980s and the economic reforms commonly identified as the causes of financialisation. In addition, these discourses are found to have been reconditioned in order to align with broader macroeconomic policy concerns of the time. The article therefore provides a rare view of assetisation from within the state apparatus, revealing how housing policy and its discourses around consumption became functionally integrated within wider macroeconomic goals. Keywords Assetisation, England, financialisation, Housing, macroeconomic policy Ryan-Collins et al., 2012; Stephens, 2007). This pro- Introduction cess is supported by consumer demand for home The assetisation of land and housing has elicited sig- ownership (Jorda et al., 2016; Rolnik, 2013) and by a nificant attention in recent years (Ducastel and consumer relationship with housing in which homes Anseeuw, 2014; Gallent et al., 2019; Ward and provide asset-based welfare (Adkins et al., 2019) Swyngedouw, 2018). Understanding this form of through house-price Keynesianism (Crouch, 2009). assetisation is important because it is fundamental to the character of contemporary financialised capital- ism (Langley, 2021) and of national economies. For Corresponding author: example, the preference among banks for lending Phoebe Stirling, Darwin College, University of Cambridge, Silver secured against property, and the associated perverse Street, Cambridge CB3 9EU, UK. incentives are well known (Ryan Collins, 2019; Email: phoebe.stirling@ucl.ac.uk 16 European Urban and Regional Studies 30(1) The research project on which this article draws section elaborates the methodology, drawing on aimed to better understand the progressive assetisa- archive and interview data on housing policy devel- tion of housing in the United Kingdom. Following opment and discourse throughout the 20th and 21st the theory of a relationship between consumer hous- centuries. ‘Findings’ presents findings relating to ing choice and national political and economic three cases of housing policy development – each restructuring (Castles, 1998; Kemeny, 1981, 2005; linked to broader macroeconomic strategising of Schwartz and Seabrooke, 2008), we sought evidence government – and the discursive conditioning of the about the nature of this relationship: how this restruc- consumer relationship with housing associated with turing and actual market operation affect one another. these shifts in policy. Each case highlights how Opening the ‘black box’ of markets requires appre- housing policy has been designed not according to hending the ‘assemblage of material and technologi- the social function of housing, but according to much cal elements in combination with human activity’ broader macroeconomic concerns. The first reveals (Fields, 2017) that makes them up. From the various how housing policy has been designed to support elements involved in the assetisation of housing, this productive activity and national economic growth. article drills into housing policy discourse around The second illustrates a change in macroeconomic the consumer relationship with housing. While the thinking which led the 1951–1955 government to work of the state is only a part of the human activity strengthen the function of housing as an asset for that makes up the financialisation of housing, it is individual consumers. The third looks at more recent nevertheless a significant aspect and one of the most shifts from individual to institutional investment into overlooked (Christophers, 2017). the housing system. In each case, the consumer The article provides new evidence about the con- demand for, and relationship with, housing is discur- sumer relationship with housing, showing how pol- sively reconditioned to align with the broader mac- icy discourses around housing tenure and consumer roeconomic policy concerns of the time. subjectivities have been reconditioned around hous- ing as an asset, to support new directions in macro- Review of existing evidence economic policy throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. We reach two significant conclusions. What is the assetisation of housing? First, the assetisation of housing – the foundation of Housing systems are fundamental to national econo- its financialisation – was pursued through housing mies, leading macroeconomists to study the various policy reform well before the 1980s, supported ways they affect the dynamics of aggregate eco- through shifting policy discourses around the con- nomic activity. House prices can affect consumer sumer subject. Second, and more importantly, this spending (and therefore GDP) through the collateral trend was related to the macroeconomic concerns of channel, by improving access to additional credit for government, rather than concerns about housing homeowners (Muellbauer, 2007, 2018). Falling policy itself. The history related here shows how house prices can cause credit availability to contract, housing policy and its discourses have become func- even more than rising prices can lead it to expand tionally integrated with wider macroeconomic goals (Hendry and Muellbauer, 2018). House-price appre- such as to control inflation, and the pursuit of new ciation can also affect gross domestic product (GDP) forms of economic growth. The central implication through the wealth effect, encouraging households is that housing policy should be understood as a to save less and spend more (Kaplan et al., 2016; macroeconomic resource before being considered an Mian et al., 2013). Other channels include the liquid- element of social policy. ity channel, by which house prices can affect the The article has the following structure. The ease of sales and thereby also affect mortgage lend- ‘Review of existing evidence’ outlines the research ers’ attitudes to lending; as well as the cash-flow, on which this article draws, theorising a link between redistribution and income channels (Hedlund et al., contemporary capitalism and the housing choices of 2017). Monetary policy levers like interest rates can individual consumers. The ‘Data and analysis’ Stirling et al. 17 be used to manipulate the various ways that housing channels, rather than through trade or commodity functions as an asset through these channels, but production (Krippner, 2005). It is also used to such levers affect households differently depending describe the condition of specific markets which on their type of mortgage (e.g. variable or fixed) or have become financialised; those in which value is degree of leverage, hence the interest in housing created and managed not according to the inherent among macroeconomic scholars (Bahaj et al., 2018; materialities of the market concerned – in this case, Burrows, 2016; Calza et al., 2009; Cloyne et al., the consumer market for houses – but according to 2016; Fair, 2016; Geiger et al., 2016). There is debate the credit that can be secured on the expectation of about which levers, targets and variables should be steadily increasing economic rent (Bradley, 2021; considered by macroeconomic policymakers Gunnoe, 2014). This requires the reshaping of certain (Hendry and Muellbauer, 2018). It has been argued, elements within value chains (whether these be phys- for instance, that falling residential sales (leading to ical or organisational elements) so they can function falling employment in construction, finance and real as financial artefacts or investment opportunities estate, as well as in the production of consumer dura- (Birch, 2017; Ducastel and Anseeuw, 2014). The bles) might be the most accurate predictor of eco- commodities on offer – in this case housing – are still nomic recession, putting the emphasis on housing produced or for sale, but at the same time, their mar- consumption and housing starts (rather than house kets are fundamentally organised around their status prices per se) for macroeconomic wellbeing (Leamer, as an asset (rather than as a commodity). 2007, 2015). Scholars studying social and geographical out- How and why has housing been assetised? comes (rather than macroeconomic outcomes) have focused instead on asking how different regimes of Analytic interest in the financialisation of economic accumulation or modes of capitalism impact the and social life (and the assets at its foundation) pre- housing system (Lowe, 2011; Lowe et al., 2011; ceded the global financial crisis (GFC; Krippner, Ronald and Dewilde, 2017; Schwartz and Seabrooke, 2005; Langley, 2006) but the GFC-focused housing, 2008). Where the macroeconomic literature seeks to urban and regional studies on these phenomena understand the relationship dynamics between hous- (Aalbers, 2009, 2016; Botzem and Dobusch, 2017; ing and the macroeconomy, these scholars have Fields, 2017; Guironnet et al. 2016). Literature often emphasised the history of this relationship; not sim- pinpoints the 1970s and 1980s as decades of critical ply the role that housing plays as an asset, but its change (Birch, 2017; Christophers, 2017; Krippner, assetisation. ‘Assetisation’ is usually associated with 2005; Rolnik, 2013). There is a tendency to frame ‘financialisation’, being understood as ‘the path to the late 1970s and 1980s as the most significant turn- housing financialisation’ (Wu et al., 2020) or one of ing point in the history of the UK housing system, as the processes underpinning it (Birch, 2017; Ward capitalist economies moved from a Keynesian post- and Swyngedouw, 2018). For scholars of housing, war consensus (during the late 1940s to the 1970s) to urban and regional studies, analysis has focused on a post-Fordist regime, in response ‘to the 1970s oil understanding the driving forces of these phenom- shock and global recession’ (Waterhout et al., 2013: ena (Jorda et al., 2016; Pappa, 2016); the actors, 143, see also Crouch, 2009). The significance of the infrastructures and practices implicated (Aalbers, 1980s is well documented as a period that brought 2016; Botzem and Dobusch, 2017; Bradley, 2021; forth the economic and banking disruptions that Ducastel and Anseeuw, 2014; Fields, 2017; Ouma, have been identified as the ‘common causes’ of 2015; Savini and Aalbers, 2015) and their nature and financialisation (Gallent et al., 2017). These disrup- variegated impacts in different localities (Aalbers, tions included the deregulation of the banking sector 2009; Ward and Swyngedouw, 2018). and credit liberalisation (Gallent et al., 2017; Ryan- Financialisation is a form of economic restructur- Collins et al., 2012), drawing more diverse financial ing that can be identified across entire economies, in institutions into mortgage lending, advancing access which profit is created increasingly through financial to international capital markets for housing finance 18 European Urban and Regional Studies 30(1) (Balmaceda et al., 2014) and breaking the link Watson, 2010). Watson (2010: 414) discusses the between savings deposits and mortgage lending construction of investor subjects throughout the (Wainwright, 2009). This also led to the proliferation 1990s and 2000s, as New Labour’s attempts to of new financial tools such as mortgage-backed establish house-price Keynesianism produced an securities (Gotham, 2016) and more predatory mort- ‘asset-holding society’. By reflecting on the moralis- gage lending practices (Rolnik, 2013). ing tone of government documents during the 2000s, There have also been ‘place-specific triggers’ he shows that policy and political discourse are sig- which in the United Kingdom are understood to nificant to the construction of consumer subjectivi- include active encouragements towards home own- ties, and hence assetisation. Discourses around home ership and the denigration of renting as an inferior ownership are an important part of this, as ‘[r]espon- tenure (Gallent et al., 2017: 2211). International sible home-owners are distinguished [. . .] from their research has emphasised the centrality of home own- Other: those irresponsible and irrational individuals ership and private property to financialisation who spend “dead money” on rent and fail to get “a (Belotti and Arbaci, 2021), backed by ‘the political foot on the property ladder”’ (Langley, 2006). force of homeownership ideology’ (Rolnik, 2013) and ‘myths concerning the superiority of home-own- The state and the assetisation of housing ership over other forms of tenure’ (Kemeny, 1981: 11). Jorda et al (2016) provide evidence of UK finan- The main focus of research on assetisation has been cialisation being driven by ‘the great mortgaging’ on private actors (Christophers, 2017). While the and correlated closely with a rising share of mort- state is considered an important actor in the recent gage loans in banks’ total lending portfolios during trend towards treating land and housing as an asset the 20th century. These authors show that high levels (Aalbers, 2016; Christophers, 2013), its role remains of home ownership, far from being a fundamental under researched (Christophers, 2017; Feng et al., trait of advanced economies, have been a significant 2021). The state’s role has been conceptualised as historical prerequisite for financialised housing mar- providing the necessary conditions and licences for kets. Scholars of ‘asset-based welfare’ point towards the practices that are required in order to financialise a political, ideological and discursive shift towards markets, including policing property rights (Harvey, homes as assets (Castles, 1998; Doling and Ronald, 1982). Its role is often traced back to the deregula- 2010; Kemeny, 1980, 2005; Lennartz, 2017; Lowe, tion of mortgage markets since the 1980s (Ashton 2011; Lowe et al., 2011; Ronald and Dewilde, 2017; et al., 2016; Feng et al., 2021) or more recent finan- Schwartz and Seabrooke, 2008). This literature cial policies (Aalbers, 2019; Guironnet et al., 2016). shows that individuals’ housing demand, choice and Even if the state has simply facilitated other actors consumption are fundamental to economic restruc- (rather than acting as an agent of financialisation turing and the process of financialisation, as house- itself, see Aalbers, 2019; Harvey, 1982; Weber, holds start to ‘use their homes as ATM machines’ 2010), the processes underpinning financialisation (Fernandez and Aalbers, 2017). An important out- involve state institutions (Gotham, 2016; Rolnik, come is ‘a new relationship with housing’ expressed 2013; Wainwright, 2009: 1059), for example, through new patterns of consumption, ‘from domes- emphasises the centrality of housing policy reform tic buyers moving their capital into bricks and mor- for financialisation, particularly concerning home tar . . . to overseas buyers “parking” money in key ownership and private property. The government investment destinations’ (Gallent et al., 2017). promotion of home ownership, often presented as The consumer relationship with housing and its being rooted in the 1970s (Wijburg, 2019), is viewed significance for state restructuring is also fore- as crucial in this respect. Active work is required grounded by scholars concerned with the ‘everyday from within the state apparatus to set the right condi- financial subjectivities’ of housing consumers, par- tions for the assetisation of housing, asset-based ticularly the ‘modern investor subject’ engaged in welfare, privatised Keynesianism or house-price contemporary mortgage networks (Langley, 2006; Keynesianism. The rationalisations behind these Stirling et al. 19 processes are rarely uncovered however, and the reforms most commonly identified as significant for view from the state apparatus remains obscure. This the assetisation of housing, 1900 was chosen as the article illuminates this view in the case of the United earliest date for data collection. Analysis was subse- Kingdom, drilling into policy discourses around quently focussed on strategic documents (mostly housing consumption at crucial points in housing White and Green Papers) rather than Bills or Acts, policy history, and revealing how these shifted to since these have discursive and rhetorical depth, support new directions in macroeconomic strategy. indicating the direction of policy reform and govern- ment rationalisations, but are not constrained by the practicalities of actual implementation. As Aalbers Data and analysis (2004, quoting Priemus 2000) has observed, policy Discourse-oriented analysis, such as the archive ‘rhetoric’ (such as that used in publicly available method used here, provides a supplementary mode White Papers) can be distinct from the actual drivers of data to practice-oriented and political economy behind policy design. In order to place discourses in analysis (Fields, 2017). It is not used to evidence the the proper context of government strategising, anal- precise causal policy mechanisms by which the state ysis was extended to archive records of the policy has advanced the assetisation of housing. Policy development process leading up to publication. reform is discussed, but our focus is on the dis- These data were used to uncover the constraints and courses deployed in order to meet these ‘institutional opportunities felt within government that informed and organisational objectives’ (Fairclough, 2001: subsequent policy reform and discourse. 231). The theory is that discourses have an opera- The Parliamentary Archives are particularly use- tional force that impacts on social action; they are ful for sourcing personal documents collated by productive or, in Foucauldian terms, a discourse can Members of Parliament around the publication of be seen as an agent of power (Carabine, 2001: 268). strategic documents, including press clippings and Power in this context operates through norms of letters from lobbies, constituents or other interested behaviour which are threaded through society, con- parties. The National Archives store multiple files on veyed through discourses which offer messages any particular policy process. These contain policy about what is normal and what is not, normalising development records drawn up during the develop- certain perspectives and behaviours above others ment of strategic documents: memos, notes and let- (Carabine, 2001: 277). It is beyond the scope of this ters between members of Cabinet, ministers and article to analyse the ways these discourses might departmental civil servants, as well as informal notes come to affect housing market operation; the task which give a better ‘feel’ for the more informal side here is to identify the shifting discourses around of policy development. It should be noted that not all housing consumption, from the view of the state, in the policy proposals referenced here preceded actual relation to housing policy reform across the 20th and implementation. The iterative nature of policy 21st centuries. By analysing the way the housing design, with all its cul-de-sacs and negotiations consumer is spoken about in national housing policy between different departments, individuals and discourse, as well as how this has changed in relation interest groups, may not always result in new regula- to specific policy reforms, this article traces the rela- tory frameworks, but gives us an important insight tionship between the work of the state, and the dis- into the opportunities and constraints felt within courses surrounding housing consumption that are government, what goals were sought with and created in the process. through the housing system, and what discourses Selection of a corpus of data involved reviewing were involved in this process. In addition, we are not all relevant housing policy documents (Bills, and concerned with assessing the agency of the state for Acts of Parliament, published Command Papers, directly affecting the assetisation of housing. As ‘housing summaries’ or ‘housing returns’ data sets). Krippner (2005) observes, forces like globalisation In order to review how discourses changed in and financialisation reduce the power of the state to advance of, and in the run-up to, the 1970s and 1980s define economic and social policy. Here, the state is 20 European Urban and Regional Studies 30(1) understood as a conduit or indicator (rather than with key informers to gain an insight into more definitive originator) of social change. This is an recent housing policy development, and to supple- important distinction because the task at hand is not ment the discursive data from published white to identify the ultimate cause behind the assetisation papers (see Table 2). Interview data were also ana- of housing, but to interrogate the discourses involved lysed thematically according to the same framework and how this work has been done. as archive data. The starting points for data collection are given in Table 1. These relate to national housing policy and Findings belong to the government department responsible for housing. Reading through these documents, links The productive function of housing were traced to interactions with other government The first decades of 20th-century housing policy departments; these were particularly with the prime were characterised by political pressure for govern- ministers’ Office, the Treasury and Cabinet. ment intervention, with widespread slum conditions Christophers (2017) describes how in the United of increasing public concern (Gallent and Tewdwr- Kingdom, the state and its processes are highly cen- Jones, 2007). With the provision of housing largely tralised, with the prime minister’s office being atypi- coordinated by private builders, it was ‘moral obli- cally significant for directing ministerial departments gation’ that forced the hand of government towards and other arms of the state. This was found here, subsidised housebuilding from 1911 onwards with policy relevant to housing often being devel- (Saunders, 1990: 26). Another strategic concern oped between the prime minister’s office and the expressed in the policy of subsidised housebuilding, Treasury. particularly during and after the First World War, Analysis applied Braun and Clark’s (2006) frame- was the function that housing might play in ‘rebal- work for qualitative thematic analysis, since this ancing’ the national economy, serving as a device to shows how discourses and thematic patterns work generate an efficient distribution of workers return- across a broad population of interlocutors or respond- ing from serving in the war. In August 1914, the ents. This framework offers a practical guide for Local Government Board wrote that finance made identifying discursive themes and relationships available to local authorities for housebuilding ‘shall between themes. Analysis resulted in distinguishing be utilised for the joint purposes of providing and the ultimate strategic goal of policy development improving housing accommodation for the working from the organisational mechanisms deployed in classes, and of preventing or mitigating unemploy- support of these goals – the pathways for action cho- ment in the building trades’. This frames housing sen, the taxes abolished, subsidy levels raised – and policy as a mechanism for tackling two distinct but the way the consumer relationship with housing was equally important goals: providing accommodation, framed discursively therein. In this article, policy and mitigating unemployment. A third goal was ‘strategy’ (the strategic goals of housing policy geographical: design) is thematically distinguished from these pol- icy ‘devices’. However, since data points coalesce When the War is over, soldiers who previously worked around specific time periods in the long run of hous- as agricultural labourers will be making up their mind ing policy history, the results of analysis are not pre- whether they will return to the land or seek occupation sented thematically but rather according to time elsewhere . . . One of the factors which has driven men sequence, for the sake of clarity. from the land in the past has been the lack of houses, One fundamental limitation of using public and unless this is remedied no other steps to render country life attractive can succeed. records offices to source documentary data is the ‘20-year rule’, which means that documents are Housebuilding is framed here as a policy device to available only after 20 years, and that there is a fun- help meet the strategic goal of attracting workers to damental inconsistency between historical and con- different locations across the country. But the success temporary data. We therefore conducted interviews Stirling et al. 21 Table 1. Corpus of archival data (distinct from ‘source material’) was defined as follows. Date Title Type of document Notes Location 1911–1914 Housing and Town Planning memoranda Memoranda dated 1911, ParliPapers 1913, 1914 1911–1919 Lloyd George papers on housing Letters Neglect of home affairs by the war Parliamentary Archives committee; Housing as part of the war and reconstruction effort 1922–1923 Bonar Law papers on housing Letters Parliamentary Archives 1933 Opinion on housing and the war effort (Lord Beaverbrook) Press clippings Stresses ‘taking care of home’: food Parliamentary Archives will mean more than guns, policy of isolation, higher wages and so on. 1933 Particulars of Slum Clearance – Particulars of slum clearance programme Report on programme ParliPapers 1934 Policy development for the 1934 White Paper on slum clearance Draft White Papers, Letters, National Archives notes, briefing papers 1934 White Paper on slum clearance White Paper development ParliPapers/National Archives 1945 White Paper on Housing Cmnd paper (The government’s policy and ParliPapers organisation for carrying it into effect) 1945 Policy development for the 1945 White Paper on Housing Letters, notes, briefing National Archives papers, Draft White Paper 1953 ‘Houses. The Next Step’ (MoHLG [Ministry of Housing and Local ParliPapers Government]. 1953. Houses – The Next Step, Cmnd 8996. London: HMSO) 1943–1956 Housing policy development (house of lords papers) Ministry Papers and The case for home ownership and Parliamentary Archives pamphlets the cost of housebuilding 1955 General election 1955 Pamphlets, manifestos Parliamentary Archives 1958 ‘House purchase: Proposed government scheme’ Programme outline ‘The government have decided to ParliPapers enable more people to buy their own homes. The way to do this is by increasing the amount of money available for lending on mortgage’. 1960 Housing in England and Wales Cmnd paper ParliPapers 1963 Letter on the 1965 Housing Bill Letter Parliamentary Archives 1963 Policy development for the 1963 Housing Policy White Paper Letters, notes, briefing National Archives papers, press clipping 1963 Housing Policy White Paper ‘Housing’ White Paper development ParliPapers/Parliamentary Archives 1965 White Paper on the national housing programme 1965 to 1970 White Paper development National Archives 1965 Policy development for the 1965 White Paper Letters National Archives 1966 Help towards home ownership Cmnd paper – details of the ParliPapers scheme 1969 London housing Consortium study on housing improvement: ‘Old Houses Study group minutes and National Archives into New Homes’ notes (ontinued) 22 European Urban and Regional Studies 30(1) Table 1. (Continued) Date Title Type of document Notes Location 1970 Building Societies Association Study on urban redevelopment Study group minutes and On building societies’ participation in National Archives notes, commissioned Study renewal/‘A study on the maintenance of demand and a proposal for the cellular renewal of twilight zones’ 1970–1971 ‘A Fair Deal for Housing’ Cmnd 4728 Cmnd paper – strategy ParliPapers 1973 Better homes. The next priorities Cmnd paper ParliPapers Draft White Paper and policy development for 1973 Better Homes White Letters, Q&A briefing, National Archives Paper Drafts of the White Paper with notes 1973 White Paper on housing and land: ‘Widening the choice: the next steps in Cmnd paper ParliPapers housing’ 1973 Draft White Paper and policy development for 1973 Widening the Choice National Archives White Paper 1977 ‘Policy for the Inner Cities’ (Cmnd. 6845) Cmnd paper ParliPapers 1976 Housing Policy. A consultative document Result of a housing policy review ParliPapers starting in 1975, initially confined to financial issues 1973–1977–1978 Policy development for Inner City Areas policy Press clippings, Letters Prototype Housing Action Areas, National Archives with LAs, meeting minutes, Construction reports 1977 Public Expenditure White Paper – housing chapter Points arising from the WP, National Archives Graph on investment in LA dwellings 1982 White Paper on improvement of the housing stock: ‘Housing Improvement Draft WP and note National Archives Policy’ 1980 Review of Housing Subsidies Speech on owner National Archives occupation and housing loans 1980 on Right-to-Buy Press, publicity and reviews Home ownership constructed as a Parliamentary archives ‘natural desire’ 1983 Building societies – a new framework Green Paper ParliPapers 1984–1987 Housing policy development (in advance of 1987 white paper) ‘Housing Letters and reports National Archives strategy/Scenarios for housing’ 1985 Home Improvement – a new approach Consultation document Encouraging owners to help ParliPapers themselves 1985 Public Expenditure White Paper – housing chapter Draft housing chapter National Archives 1987 ‘Housing: the government’s proposals’ Cmnd 214. Cmnd paper ParliPapers 1989 Public Expenditure White Paper – housing chapter – New Financial Regime Draft housing chapter National Archives 1994 ‘Our future homes. Opportunity, choice, responsibility. The government’s Cmnd. Policy statement ParliPapers housing policies for England and Wales’ (ontinued) Stirling et al. 23 Table 1. (Continued) Date Title Type of document Notes Location 1996 Green paper ‘Household growth: Where shall we live?’ Green Paper ParliPapers 1998 ‘A new contract for welfare – Safeguarding social security’ Strategy ParliPapers 1999 ‘Our Towns and Cities: The Future’ urban white paper Cmnd paper ParliPapers 2000 ‘Quality and Choice: A Decent Home for All’ Green Paper Internet 2002 Government response to a select committee report on affordable homes Government response ParliPapers 2002 Government response to Housing Committee report on the Draft Housing Government response ParliPapers Bill 2002 Housing benefit amendment Amendment ParliPapers 2002 Housing benefit amendment 2003 Amendment ParliPapers 2002 ‘Sharing Homes: A Discussion Paper’ Discussion paper ParliPapers 2003 ‘Sustainable communities’ Action programme, marking Internet ‘a step-change in our policies’ 2003 Housing Bill – consultation on draft legislation Consultation on draft ParliPapers legislation 2011 Laying the foundations Government strategy Internet 2017 ‘Fixing our broken housing market’ Interweb/hard copy 24 European Urban and Regional Studies 30(1) Table 2. Full list of interviewees. No. Interviewee position 1 Developer (Executive Director of Property Development) 2 Residential market research (Senior Research Analyst) 3 Estate agency professional association (CEO) 4 Estate agency professional association (Chairman) 5 Architect (Partner) 6 Surveyor (Director) 7 Housing economist (consultant) 8 Housing policy consultant 9 Housing policy consultant 10 Housing market research (research manager) agricultural cottager may have to move; and when he of this device rested on a particular consumer rela- does he must be given full compensation for his garden. tionship with housing, in which workers could be But, broadly speaking, the farm labourer’s cottage is ‘attracted’ by the housing offer. This framing of his home, and should remain so till his garden and his housing consumption is illustrated in a 1917 memo- allotment no longer suffice, and he moves to a small randum of the Reconstruction Committee, which holding of the larger kind; when he may leave the old illustrates how ‘attractive’ housing was to play a part home to his son. in national economic strategy, drawing the agricul- tural labourer towards productive work in the The attractions of housing to the agricultural country: labourer are framed here in terms of pleasantness, As counter-attractions to the magnetism of the town, comfort, pleasures and ‘forms of happiness’; as an we must for the most part look to pleasures, to forms of object of policy, housing is understood in relation to happiness, and to sources of income which are denied the consumer’s ‘preferences’ with regard to his the dweller in most of our big industrial centres. Of ‘home’, and to security of tenure. It is the labourer, these a detailed discussion would be out of place here, rather than the house, which is expressed as an but in his housing we can, to a great extent, give the ‘asset’. Housing services are exchanged for workers’ returning soldier most of the very same advantages he ‘knowledge of the soil and of the behaviour of the had in the town, and several in addition which he could land’, incentivising them to remain in one location not get in the town. He can have more, not less so that farmers do not need to ‘change men unneces- accommodation, because the cost of the site represented sarily’. While housing may have functioned as an so infinitesimal a sum in the weekly rent. He can have asset for a relatively small number of individual a proper water supply; he can have good sanitary arrangements; he can have a range in the scullery, so owners at this time, within national housing policy that his living room need not be unbearably hot – unless the function of housing for consumers was framed as he prefers to live in the scullery’ and, above all, he can the housing services it offered – put to the service of have ample ground for garden, pig, and poultry [. . .] a policy strategy for effective agricultural production Security of tenure, the ability to remain in the same and economic balance. house and make it the family home, this, perhaps the This productive function of housebuilding was chief desire the agricultural worker [. . .] there will be drawn on throughout the interwar years. The less tendency for farmers to change their hands; for in Conservative government that came to power in itself the knowledge of the soil and of the behaviour of 1935 announced their success with a housing pro- the land in different weather, etc., which the labourer gramme that was the ‘Key to British recovery’, as an acquired from long experience of the same far, is an interview with Lord Beaverbrook (owner of the asset of great value; and no good farmer will want to change his men unnecessarily. Of course, even the Evening Standard and later Minister of State, of Stirling et al. 25 Supply and of War Production in Churchill’s not fall, and subsidy remained an essential part of Cabinet) illustrates, their upkeep into the 1950s. In 1947, the govern- ment commissioned a report on the subject. This framed the rising cost of housebuilding, relative to Things are going well in this country. The Government is strong and the country is recovering. What is the the beneficial effects for the national economy, as reason? Housebuilding. Just that. The burst of activity out of balance. The appointed Committee of Enquiry in the housebuilding industry lies at the back of the felt that this warranted a revision in public spending whole of this welcome wave of recovery. No form of on housebuilding: expenditure spreads its effects so quickly through every branch of industry as housebuilding. None A large part of the cost today is being borne by subsidies touches the whole economic structure in the same way. . . . [which] will increase cumulatively by about £3.3 It is not only a question of a boom in the brick business million per annum for so long as subsidies remain at or cement. There are also electric appliances of every the 1947 level. While we agree that housing must have kind, electric wire (with a reaction on the copper high priority among the claims on the available national market), paint, timber, wallpaper, nails, slates, and so resources, we consider that in any review of the housing forth. Then when you put the roof on and get the new programme the financial implications must be borne tenants in, there is furniture to be got. Don’t imagine prominently in mind they bring in old furniture. They do not. And the further out of town you build these houses the better it is. For The support that public housebuilding could then the tenants must buy a motor-car if they do not give to national economic growth was seen as lim- have one already. It is my belief that you would do well ited relative to its rising costs, which were viewed in America too, if you embarked on a big housing as unsustainable. Nevertheless, both Labour and programme instead of squandering your money in the Conservatives supported a continued subsidised other and less fruitful directions housebuilding programme, providing evidence of a post-war consensus. This was propagated by a dis- The use of housebuilding for this end puts hous- course on housing conditions as the main feature of ing policy squarely in the realm of the ‘post-war individuals’ relationship with their housing, empha- consensus’ (Dutton, 1991; Kavanagh and Morris, sising the particular needs of married couples and 1994). In British history, this is used to describe the families, and framing ‘better housing’ as the most consensus between both Labour and Conservative important outcome of housing policy. As might be governments throughout the 1940s and 1950s on expected of post-war housing policy, the repair of maintenance of the welfare state, the mixed econ- damaged and slum housing is addressed, but house- omy and other Keynesian demand-side measures in building is given priority, underpinned by order to ensure full employment (Rollings, 1996). ‘betterment’: The use of housing as a productive element of budg- etary policy was interrupted by the Second World The present demand for housing [. . .] has not in fact the War. But after the war, this strategic goal supposedly same relentless pressure behind it [as the demand forged a political consensus on the merits of budget- which arose at the end of the last war] [and] must come ary policy (including direct public investment into from a rise in the standard of living which would housing) as a macroeconomic resource. probably have to take the form not merely of By 1945, with housing policy tangled in the fall- compulsory slum clearance [. . .] but an active desire on out of war, policymakers stated that ‘The first objec- the part of people who already have a reasonable house tive of the Government is to use for housing all the to get something better productive resources of the nation that can be spared and so to provide the largest number of houses in the Great concern is expressed about the number of shortest possible time’. Subsidies were required to newly married couples, and giving them access to encourage building at scale, but intended to be tem- ‘separate dwellings’. Discourse on consumers porary, to achieve a strategy of ‘reduce[d] building takes a different tone to that around the ‘attractive- costs, as quickly as possible’. But building costs did ness’ of labourers’ cottages in the interwar years; 26 European Urban and Regional Studies 30(1) nevertheless, it still centres on the physical condition (Chancellor Rab Butler quoted in Evans 1992: 94). of housing services as the priority of the housing An election promise of 300,000 homes a year ‘sat consumer subject; there is barely a mention of tenure awkwardly’ next to commitments to reduce public and none of home ownership as investment. The spending but was in fact vital to its success (Evans division of tasks between public and private enter- 1992: 91). Reductions would eventually be achieved prise goes undetailed; the task is simply to unleash in the longer term, by raising public and private rents the building of houses. and by pursuing owner occupation: ‘sponsoring After the Conservatives gained power in 1951 home ownership by making renting less affordable this seemed to continue, with a 3-year building plan was a part of a party-political strategy which viewed drawn up to accelerate housebuilding to 300,000 a property owning democracy as the future bastion annually by 1954. These figures were intended to be of Conservative votes’ (Evans 1992: 93). objectives rather than limits: If the subsidy increase of 1952 has been over- looked, it is likely because of the U-turn that fol- There will be no arbitrary limitation by an arbitrary lowed: a shift in the mid 1950s took subsidies programme of 175,000 or 200,000 or any other figure entirely away from general and towards ‘special’ of houses a year. There is no restriction; No rigid needs. The Chancellor reported that a major adap- ceiling; No artificial limit. And the quicker you build, tation in the direction of housing policy was ‘inevi- the more there will be to build. table’; by 1954, the government were engaged in ‘Operation Round-up’, which by 1955 involved In proposing the scheme to cabinet, Minister of complete withdrawal of general needs subsidy. The Housing and Local Government, Harold Macmillan, same government that had doubled down on the promised that ‘If I can do better, I will’. post-war commitment to socially financed housing promptly kick-started its residualisation (Forrest and The monetary function of housing Murie, 1983). Alongside this U-turn, our analysis has identified a significant shift in policy discourse The strategic goal of housing policy during this surrounding the consumer relationship with housing, period has been a topic of debate. In the context of outlined below. rising costs, an expensive public housebuilding pro- gramme was pursued. Holmans’ (1987) reading of Significant changes in 1953. Contrary to Holmans’ the commitment to subsidised housing emphases the and Evans’ readings of housing policy strategy, context of rising interest rates, used to restrain infla- records suggest that initially, the 1952 commitment tion, and meaning local authorities faced higher pay- to subsidised housebuilding was sought for the same ments on the loans that financed their housebuilding. reason such schemes had been pursued in previous According to Holmans, the goal of subsidy increase decades: in order to support the building industry, was to offset this effect and protect local authority employment levels and the economy at large. These funding. The expansion of public housebuilding by faced risks due to a shortage of steel, meaning that the 1951–1955 Conservative government is here housebuilding once again provided a useful produc- posited as one of the most noteworthy episodes in tive resource in support to the national economy. The British housing history: ‘This action deserves more 3-year housebuilding programme was justified in attention than it has generally received . . . How and these terms: why the decision to protect the finances of housing in this way was taken in 1952 has attracted little It would be fatal if fear of unemployment caused a comment’ (Holmans 1987: 152). slowing up of work or an unwillingness to recruit Evans (1992) argues instead that the strategic apprentices. On the other hand, we have a great chance goal was withdrawal of housing subsidy. In the short of pressing forward with those forms of building which term, this relied on increasing subsidies to stimulate do not require any large quantity of steel . . . These are housebuilding in a high-cost vacuum, ‘until it housebuilding, conversions of houses into flats, house- repairing and general repairing. became possible to free the house-building market’ Stirling et al. 27 Once again, this supports the thesis on the post- investment, individual consumer investment into war consensus, in which both Labour and housing was framed as a means of achieving the Conservative governments saw public investment – same benefits for the economy, but one that was in this case through housing – as a resource to ease more attuned to an increasingly globalised world. unemployment and for reflation of the economy. Private housing consumption was a means of eco- The conventional reading of this post-war con- nomic reflation that avoided the risk of inflation, sensus is that investment of public budgets for full raised living costs and devaluation. The privately employment was pursued throughout the 1940s, owned house therefore served a very specific func- 1950s and 1960s. This sees a ‘collectivist macroeco- tion within macroeconomic organisation, transfer- nomic hegemony’ existing until the 1970s, when ring the cost of investment into the economy (through politicians started to question the state in public life housing) from the public to the homeowner. (Muller, 1996). This is supported by housing studies But in the field of housing policy, this macroeco- literature that points towards neoliberalisation – the nomic shift required a reconfiguration of the housing ‘reflex reliance on markets to determine the alloca- consumer subject as an investor subject. The first tion of resources’ (Berry, 2014) – as the dawn of discursive utterance on this topic identified in this public housing residualisation and the most signifi- research came from the Building Societies cant turning point in 20th-century housing policy. Association (BSA) which in 1948 emphasised the But Rollings (1996) presents us with a very dif- cost of public housebuilding and made ‘The Case for ferent reading of the post-war consensus, in which it Home Ownership’ along these lines: ceased after the 1951 election. Socially coordinated The man who buys a house [. . .] offers a threefold investment, flowing through the exchequer and the relief to the State and the local authority. In the first public sector borrowing requirement (PSBR) started place, the community is relieved of any obligation to to be understood as having inflationary tendencies. provide a house for him and thus both the State and the With its capacity to undermine confidence in Sterling local authority are saved the considerable sums [. . .] and the Sterling-Dollar exchange rate, inflation Finally, the capital cost of the house is provided as a could make the pound weak in relation to other cur- result of voluntary private saving by investors in rencies and weaken Britain’s international trading building societies and the capital which would position. It was during the early 1950s that the otherwise have had to be provided by the Government Cabinet began to follow this theory, and to prioritise becomes available for other purposes exchange rates by avoiding inflation (Rollings, 1996). By this logic, avoiding inflation would In addition, the BSA framed the act of housing require that social investment into the productive consumption as ‘gradually acquiring a substantial economy be replaced with private investment. While investment and a security on which he could readily public investment clearly continued after 1951, borrow’. This presents a discursive shift in the con- Rollings (1996) has argued that this marks the date sumer relationship with housing, emphasising the from which budgetary policy would be pursued only function that housing could play for individuals as a after international considerations were borne in means towards savings and investment, and the mind. It represents a shift in macroeconomic think- function this could serve in turn for reducing state ing that redressed the strategic goals of the various housing expenditure. This new framing of the con- government ministries. sumer relationship with housing was deployed as a For the 1951–1955 government, reducing public device through which it might be aligned with the budgets was necessary to serve the requirements of wider goals of macroeconomic restructuring. international competition. Within housing policy, Analysis of policy development in the early 1950s this could be deployed through cuts in subsidies, not reveals that the discursive device of housing as a only by retracting the general needs housebuilding personal asset was deployed within legislative, fiscal programme but also through the expansion of private and policy proposals that aimed to incentivise pri- ownership. By reducing the need for public vate investment into the economy, through house 28 European Urban and Regional Studies 30(1) forms of social investment promoted by local purchase. Policy development for the 1953 housing authorities and over productive investment promoted White Paper noted that ‘the owner-occupier costs the by the nationalised industries . . . To concede this point Exchequer nothing, and on every new house pri- would be to imperil the whole of the Government’s vately owned the Exchequer saves a subsidy of interest-rate policy; and the Committee have therefore £770’. In that same year, work started on a ‘house [recommended] that the Government will be prepared purchase scheme’, to be agreed with the BSA, to to defend discrimination in favour of the building lubricate mortgage lending: societies as a deliberate act of social policy and to resist, regardless of the circumstances, pressure by the The main obstacle today to an extension of home local authorities and the nationalised industries for a ownership is not the rate of interest, nor the need to put 28 corresponding concession. (emphasis added) down a deposit, but the difficulty of getting a loan on mortgage because the demand on building societies This excerpt illustrates the way that private exceeds their available resources. The simple and investment into the housing system (through mort- effective remedy is [. . .] making Government money gage lending to owner-occupiers) was prioritised as available to increase the flow of mortgages for house 23 part of national economic (interest-rate) policy, and purchase. was therefore given preferential subsidy to other social policy areas. While defended as a social This strategy was supported by discourses around (rather than economic) policy, the device of incenti- home ownership as investment, as illustrated in a vising ownership was de facto an element of macro- 1954 press conference: economic strategy. While policy lag meant that the tax treatment of home ownership was not revised There is hardly a better form of saving for the whole until 1963, ‘New thinking’ was requested from civil family than by investing in the home which the whole family uses. The Minister believes that there is little servants to encourage individuals to invest in hous- doubt that many more families will buy homes of their ing by strengthening the investment benefits accru- own if the financial side is made easier ing to owners. Proposals in 1958 included reduced transaction taxes; abolition of Schedule ‘A’ tax on Published in 1956, the scheme was controversial owner-occupiers; ‘pressure and/or incentives for largely because the interest rate at which building local authorities to sell council houses [. . . and . . .] societies could borrow from government was lower the offer of 100 per cent mortgages’. By strength- than that for other social investments, such as for ening the attractions of housing-based equity to con- transport, fuel, power, schools, roads, health ser- sumers, policymakers aimed to shift tenure vices or mortgages for home ownership funded by preferences to align with the logic of monetary local authority finance. A justification for limiting (rather than budgetary) policy. the subsidy to building societies was sought. Suggestions ranged from ‘political grounds’ to 27 The assetisation of housing: from administrative practicability. By 1958, the deci- individual to institutional investment sion was defended on the basis that building socie- ties provided a service that was ‘country-wide in its While resting on the demand for mortgage credit, extent and uniform in its application’, but this was the 2008 financial crash was a crisis of macroeco- only half of the problem: nomic organisation. Its threats, like plummeting spending on goods, services and other business I do not know how convincing you will find [this]. But investments in the real, productive economy, were you will observe that it does not answer the criticism macroeconomic. The response was also macroeco- that the Government are proposing to give higher nomic, with the Bank of England lowering interest priority to house purchase than to other forms of social rates to reduce the cost of borrowing and encour- investment – simply because there is no answer to this age circulation of investment. With interest rates criticism . . . [the charge is] that the Government are so low (reduced to 0.5% in 2009) maintaining this giving priority to the purchase of houses . . . over other Stirling et al. 29 It became even harder for people to actually buy homes strategy required further unconventional monetary and then one of the ways to reduce or control that, other policy. Quantitative easing (QE) was intended to than, you know, increase in interest rates, is to try and give banks greater liquidity to encourage further increase the supply of housing. Not necessarily causing lending (House of Commons, 2016), a financial- prices to fall because that would have the same issue in ised solution to stimulating real economic growth. terms of government policies, rates and all that stuff. In August 2016, the Bank of England’s Monetary But to make it grow at a steady pace. (I8) Policy Committee voted to extend QE by £25 bil- lion to £140 billion, cut the benchmark interest rate This illustrates a shift in housing policy – from to 0.25% and introduce the Term Funding Scheme emphasising tenure (and particularly the invest- (TFS; House of Commons, 2016). Its aim was sim- ment benefits associated with ownership), to ilar to previous initiatives; it would ensure that emphasising supply – a shift that was determined banks passed lower interest rates to end users, with by the broader macroeconomic strategy of govern- up to £100 billion ‘newly printed money’ provid- ment. Increased housing supply was pursued across ing cheap loans to commercial banks linked to the all tenures. In London, the Greater London amount they lent to firms and households (House Authority’s response was to create more land avail- of Commons, 2016). ability and density through the planning system: This strategy, based on the vehicle of debt, was ‘pushing back garden development, town centre geared towards macroeconomic (rather than hous- regeneration, demolishing council estates, . . . get- ing) goals but created the context for a post-crisis ting as much density as possible onto those sites, rush in effective demand for home ownership. The [getting] local authorities in areas surrounding status that housing had achieved as an asset rela- London to take on higher housing targets’ (I10). As tive to other investments during previous decades a policy device, densification has characterised UK meant that boosts to investment in general ushered housing and planning reform since (MHCLG, large amounts of capital into housing specifically. 2020); one way to address affordability without QE and TFS drew demand away from bonds and also undermining the status of housing as an asset. equities and meant that physical assets would Another housing policy device that could be used offer better returns, all contributing to the status of to raise supply of housing without bolstering or housing as an asset and the declining affordability undermining house prices was the institutional pro- of house purchase. The low-interest rate environ- vision of rental property. This had the potential to ment made large mortgages increasingly afforda- bring in the scale of investment required for large- ble and accelerated price inflation (Hedlund et al., scale housebuilding in urban centres, given rising 2017). According to our interviewees, this was land values: ‘build to rent is bringing investment to something acknowledged by policymakers at the get more stuff built; what other ways can you get time, but seen as unavoidable (I8). stuff built, when people can’t pay?’ (I8). Under pres- Thus, while alleviated credit constraints had sure to increase access to dwellings without damag- implications for housing affordability, it was also ing a precarious national economy, institutional seen as central to the strategy for economic recov- investment into housing would become the object of ery: a rush to assets and rising house prices were an explicit government strategy. Government com- bound up in the engine of growth selected by gov- missioned a review to investigate whether the rented ernment. Any housing policy geared towards greater sector could offer potential investment opportunities access or affordability would need to sit within this of interest to large-scale institutional investors, and strategy. One such device, sitting happily in a low- to consider the potential for attracting such invest- interest rate, high-debt environment, was increasing ment into new homes for private rent (Montague, the supply of housing in order to put downwards 2012). This model for investing into the housing pressure on house prices. From 2010 onwards, the economy forms a significant element of the 2017 issue of raising housing supply came to dominate housing policy White Paper, which develops devices housing policy design: to reduce the constraints of the build to rent delivery 30 European Urban and Regional Studies 30(1) model, and to shift incentives from individual to in macroeconomic policy. Individual consumers (and institutional landlords (DCLG, 2017). their relationship with housing, or demand for certain Once again, this shift in housing policy has tenures) contribute monthly rental payments towards required a reconditioning of the consumer demand the continued assetisation of housing. for housing. Support for the function of housing as an asset for individuals shifted to include support for Conclusion housing as an asset for institutions and corporate bodies. As well as incentives for institutions them- Through analysis of housing policy discourse selves, this has required reframing the benefits of around the consumer subject and relationship with renting to individual consumers of housing. housing, this article shows how this has been Montague (2012), for example, advocated a ‘renting reconditioned to support new directions in macro- plus’ model that would compensate for the loss of economic strategy throughout the 20th and 21st ownership with other attractive features particular to centuries. One conclusion is that the assetisation of renting, and specialist services like concierges, laun- housing in the United Kingdom was pursued dry, repairs, delivery and grocery services. The mar- through housing policy reform well before the ket-level adaptation to this shift has involved the 1980s, supported through shifting policy dis- production of institutional, amenity-heavy, and com- courses around the consumer subject. munal models of rent as an aspirational tenure. By Research has shown that financialised economic contrast, small private landlords started to be framed activity rose sharply in the 1980s (Krippner, 2005) unfavourably in housing policy discourse. One of and has reported on the ‘investor subject’ that is part their few mentions in the White Paper characterises of this transition (Watson, 2010), emerging since them as predatory: expansion of the mortgage market (Langley, 2006). This literature and the concept of financialisation have tended to overshadow other factors in the 20th- [. . .] high demand and low supply is creating opportunities for exploitation and abuse: unreasonable century housebuilding boom. We have found that in letting agents’ fees, unfair terms in leases, landlords the United Kingdom, discourses on the investor sub- letting out dangerous, overcrowded properties. In ject emerged years before, and were related to the short, it’s becoming harder to rent a safe, secure macroeconomic concerns of government, rather than property. (p. 10) the concerns of housing policy itself. By drawing on new archive data and tracing housing policy strategy The white paper is notable because it lacks discur- and discourses over a longer period than is usually sive distinction between home ownership and renting. considered, this article shows that the prospect for Just as, in the early 1950s, housing policy shifted its housing consumers to build equity through home focus from supply and the condition of housing to the ownership was deployed as part of macroeconomic balance of tenure, 2017 marked a juncture at which strategy from the 1950s onwards. This challenges a the balance of tenure receded. This represented a dis- tendency to frame housing policy as moving from a cursive shift away from the asset function of housing Keynesian post-war consensus (during the late 1940s for individuals and households. The consumer rela- to the 1970s) to a post-Fordist regime, as a reaction tionship with housing was reframed as ‘the most basic ‘to the 1970s oil shock and global recession’ of human needs’ (p. 9); no encouragements were (Waterhout et al., 2013: 143, see also Crouch, 2009). made to buy over renting, nor any investment-related While it may be true that ‘Homes until the liberalisa- benefits to housing mentioned. However, this shift tion of the banks in the 1980s were just that, places does not undermine, but continues to reinforce the where people lived’ (Lowe, 2011: 204), the housing salience of housing as an asset for corporate entities. It system had already been placed on its trajectory marks another juncture at which policy discourse towards assetisation decades before; more a case of around housing tenure and the housing consumer sub- policy accretion than a radical shift towards a neolib- ject has been reconditioned to support new directions eral paradigm. Stirling et al. 31 In addition, we have shown that assetisation of Funding housing is not supported solely by the high levels of The author(s) received no financial support for the private home ownership that emerged in the mid- research, authorship and/or publication of this article. 20th century (Jorda et al., 2016; Rolnik, 2013) but could also be buttressed by rental tenures (Fields, ORCID iD 2017, 2018; Belotti and Arbaci, 2021) and an aspira- Phoebe Stirling https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3619- tional renter subject. Assetisation is therefore not lim- ited by any particular consumer relationship with housing, or by a system of accumulation grounded in Notes house-price Keynesianism and asset-based welfare 1. Parliamentary Archives F/177/1/5 – F/178/1. Lloyd provision. Rather, assetisation in the housing system George Papers. Memorandum of the Reconstruction is a flexible process (Wijburg, 2019), centred simply Committee 21 August 1914. around private investment into housing. This indi- 2. Parliamentary Archives F/177/1/5 – F/178/1. cates the significance of assetisation beyond the Lloyd George Papers. ‘Memorandum on Housing indebtedness of individual households (Langley, in England and Wales’, by the Reconstruction 2021) and has implications for the housing invest- Committee, May 1917, p. 3. ment landscapes we see around us today. As house 3. Memorandum of the Reconstruction Committee, prices rise above the level that incomes can carry June 1917: ‘Housing in England and Wales: Memorandum by Mr Leslie Scott – Considerations them, some predict a shift away from neoliberal poli- upon Mr Rowntree’s Memorandum (R.C. No.89) and cymaking and its assetisation of housing: ‘the market Lord Salisbury’s Memorandum’ p. 11. will need to be re-embedded in society at some point’ 4. Parliamentary Archives: BBK/L/61: Article by Lord (Fernandez and Aalbers, 2017: 155). But this position Beaverbrook in the Toledo Blade (A Newspaper in is undermined if assetisation depends less on housing Ohio, U.S.), 12 April 1935. as an asset for individual consumers, and more on an 5. National Archives 315/45 ‘The Office for the Minister indiscriminate drive for private investment into the of Reconstruction – Draft White Paper on Housing’: housing system to support macroeconomic goals. Draft White Paper, section of text removed from the The central implication of these findings is that final version. housing policy should be understood within housing, 6. National Archives 315/45 ‘The Office for the Minister urban and regional studies as a macroeconomic of Reconstruction – Draft White Paper on Housing’: Draft White Paper, section of text removed from the resource before it is an element of social policy. The final version. priorities of the Treasury regarding Britain’s strate- 7. Parliamentary Archives SAM/G/25-29 – The Liberal gic economic and global position have, thus far, pro- Party Housing Committee Interim Report, 1951. vided the organising principles according to which 8. Parliamentary Archives SAM/G/25-29 – ‘The Cost housing policy and discourse are aligned before of Housebuilding’ – First Report of the Committee housing-based goals have been pursued. Housing of Inquiry appointed by the Minister of Health. policy and its discourses about the consumer subject Appointed in June 1947 and reporting in 1948. have become functionally integrated within wider 9. Parliamentary Archives SAM/G/25-29 – ‘The Cost macroeconomic goals. Any intervention intending to of Housebuilding’ – First Report of the Committee strengthen the social function of housing, achieve of Inquiry appointed by the Minister of Health. greater supply or greater affordability, needs to Appointed in June 1947 and reporting in 1948. 10. National Archives 315/45 ‘The Office for the Minister acknowledge the historical scale of this entangle- of Reconstruction – Draft White Paper on Housing’. ment and of its associated interests. 11. National Archives 315/45 ‘The Office for the Minister of Reconstruction – Draft White Paper on Declaration of conflicting interests Housing’. The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest 12. National Archives 315/45 ‘The Office for the with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication Minister of Reconstruction – Draft White Paper on of this article. Housing’. 32 European Urban and Regional Studies 30(1) 13. National Archives HLG 101/504 Housing Policy Housing and Local Government and Minister for Committee: constitution and general correspondence, Welsh Affairs. Extract from Minister’s Speech – 23 January 1952. 24. National Archives HLG 117/140, Scheme for govern- 14. National Archives CAB 129/48/43, The Building ment guarantees to cover larger percentage advances: Industry and the Housing Programme Memorandum discussions with local authority and building society by the Minister of Housing and Local Government, associations; points from which the Minister may like Printed for the Cabinet. 14 December 1951. to speak at the Press Conference on Tuesday, 4 May 15. National Archives CAB 129/77/16 Economic (1954). Situation: Housing Policy. Memorandum by the 25. 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National Archives CAB 21/4421 Housing Policy Situation: Housing Policy. Memorandum by the 1953–1960, ‘Home Ownership’ Joint Memorandum Chancellor of the Exchequer, presented to Cabinet, 3 by Secretary of State for Scotland and Minister of September 1955. Housing and Local Government and Minster for 19. National Archives CAB 129/48/43, The Building Welsh Affairs (July 1958). Industry and the Housing Programme Memorandum 29. National Archives CAB 21/4421 Housing Policy by the Minister of Housing and Local Government, 1953–1960, Prime Minister’s Personal Minute from Printed for the Cabinet. 14 December 1951. the Minister of Housing and Local Government, 20. Parliamentary Archives SAM/G/25-29, ‘The Case dated 3 April 1958. for Home Ownership’, memorandum by the Building 30. Until 1963, homeowners paid ‘Schedule A’ income Societies Association, dated 30 December 1948. tax on the imputed income afforded by the value of 21. 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Journal

European Urban and Regional StudiesSAGE

Published: Jan 1, 2023

Keywords: Assetisation; England; financialisation; Housing; macroeconomic policy

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