Home Ownership

The aim of this study is to examine the association between sense of community, walking, and neighborhood design characteristics. The current study is based on a sub-sample of participants (n ¼ 609) from the US Atlanta SMARTRAQ study who completed a telephone survey capturing physical activity patterns, neighborhood perceptions, and social interactions. Objective measures of neighborhood form were also computed. Univariate and multivariate models (General Linear Models (GLM)) were used to examine the association between sense of community (SofC) and aspects of the built environment, physical activity, and neighborhood perceptions. In multivariate models the impact on SofC was examined with progressive adjustment for demographics characteristics followed by walking behavior, neighborhood design features, neighborhood perceptions and time spent traveling in a car.

This paper aims to contribute to the debate in comparative housing studies about the significance of national housing policies by considering what can be learnt from analysing the consequences of different policy paths. In particular, the paper looks at the evidence of the long-run impacts of different housing strategies adopted to assist lower-income households in Australia and the Netherlands, using housing affordability as a measure of their impact. Australia is an example of a country that has promoted mass home ownership across the income distribution supplemented by a very small public housing system. In contrast, the Netherlands has relied more on a large and diversified social housing sector. The comparative analysis shows that there are many similarities in the patterns of affordability among low-income households in the two countries despite the use of different policy means. In the past, both countries had good success providing secure and affordable housing for poorer households. Now, lower-income households are experiencing greater affordability problems that are linked to societal changes and the retrenchment of government housing assistance in both cases. However, the study also finds that affordability problems among lower-income households are worse in Australia because of the greater reliance on private housing in that country.

Much of rural Europe has witnessed vast changes over the past two decades, including major demographic and economic change. The question of how these changes have affected individual well-being and quality of life remains largely unanswered. This paper aims to shed light on this topic by employing both qualitative and quantitative research methods in the analysis of rural quality of life in Ireland, including focus groups, locally-specific surveys and two representative surveys of individuals carried out in 2001 and 2007. We use the respondents’ self-reported life satisfaction level as a proxy for their well-being to examine the determinants of quality of life and also examine how attitudes have changed over this period. Results show a consistently high life satisfaction in rural Ireland. The greatest changes are witnessed in attitudes to the provision of facilities and services. Respondents’ perceptions of the benefits and limitations of rural living remain constant between the two...

'The Changing State of Gentrification' (2001) by Jason Hackworth and the late Neil Smith is one of the most influential papers ever published in TESG. By introducing three waves, or periods, of practices and patterns of gentrification, it changed the way we think about gentrification. This Introduction to the Forum discusses the three waves introduced by Hackworth and Smith as well as fourth wave introduced by Lees et al. Finally, I will argue that during the global financial crisis we have entered fifth-wave gentrification. Fifth-wave gentrification is the urban materialization of financialized or finance-led capitalism. The state continues to play a leading role during the fifth wave, but is now supplemented—rather than displaced—by finance. It is characterized by the emergence of corporate landlords, highly leveraged housing, platform capitalism (e.g. Airbnb), transnational wealth elites using cities as a 'safe deposit box', and a further 'naturalization' of state-sponsored gentrification.

Neil Smith argues that in the last two decades gentrification has become a generalized global urban phenomenon. His theory is at a high level of abstraction, as it links urban gentrification to globalization, financial capitalism and neo-liberalization. With these global processes, all cities have experienced ‘third wave’ gentrification. The theory, however, leaves little room for variegations of gentrification, apart from characterizing geographical differences as idiosyncrasies or as minor variations. This downplays the role of intervening mechanisms that impinge upon the pursuit and social outcomes of gentrification. This paper modestly aims to amend abstract theory by looking at Amsterdam from an historical institutional perspective. In Amsterdam, gentrification was particularly made possible by a process of neo-liberalization within the housing system. However, as institutional change is incremental and based on layering and conversion, many older institutional arrangements remain in place. These arrangements tend to slow gentrification and assuage social consequences. Nevertheless, neoliberal modifications to the housing system have been accelerating the pursuit of gentrification. Current policies will very likely lead to exclusionary displacement.

This paper examines portfolio allocation decisions for a large sample of demographically diverse survey respondents in light of finance theory and the recommendations of financial advisors. We investigate whether asset allocation decisions vary for respondents who differ across several dimensions including gender, home ownership, age, net worth, and psychological orientation. Sample respondents' decisions are consistent with popular advice and finance theory. We find that only age affects the mix of risky securities. When we consider the allocation of total portfolio assets to equity, all individual characteristics except age matter. Psychological orientation contributes to our ability to explain asset allocation decisions.

Financialization can be characterized as capital switching from the primary, secondary or tertiary circuit to the quaternary circuit of capital. Housing is a central aspect of financialization. The financialization of mortgage markets demands that not just homes but also homeowners become viewed as financially exploitable. It is exemplified by the securitization of mortgage loans, but also by the use of credit scoring and risk-based pricing. In the past century, mortgage markets were transformed from being a 'facilitating market' for homeowners in need of credit to one increasingly facilitating global investment. Since mortgage markets are both local consumer markets and global investment markets, the dynamics of financialization and globalization directly relate homeowners to global investors thereby increasing the volatility in mortgage markets, as the current crisis shows all too well.

Housing is a key object of financialization. There is a small but growing literature on the financialization of housing that has demonstrated how housing is a central aspect of financialization. Despite the varied analyses of the financialization of housing and the importance of housing to financialization, the relations between housing and financialization remain under-researched and under-theorized. The financialization of housing is not so much a specific from of financialization, as it transcends several of the different forms of financialization. Housing systems, in particular, differ widely across the globe, which implies that housing financialization will be inherently variegated, path-dependent and uneven. In this introduction to the Symposium, I will discuss how the articles in this Symposium contribute to the literature on the financialization of housing. Housing has entered a post-Fordist, neoliberal and financialized regime. Both mortgaged homeownership and subsidized rental housing increasingly are there to keep financial markets going, rather than being facilitated by those markets. There is little evidence that the global financial crisis has resulted in a de-financialization of housing. There are common trajectories within uneven and variegated financialization rather than radically different and completely unrelated forms of housing financialization.
Key words: housing, financialization, mortgage markets, rental housing, home ownership, state and public sector

This dissertation inquires into the forms of social reproduction of the urban poor under a process of accumulation in which real estate and finance capital have a preeminent role. My main hypothesis is that the forms of reciprocity and conflict at the scale of the household and the locality are deeply entangled with the reproduction of real estate and financial processes of accumulation. Capitalist relations regulated by the state become increasingly embedded in the everyday tensions of households and localities. This embeddedness configures social space and the dispositions, values and meanings that structure it, which simultaneously constitute the basis for particular forms of exploitation and rent-seeking activities. Following the main hypothesis, I provide a historical and anthropological explanation of the production of a particular working-class world. In this system of social reproduction, the creation and development of the construction industry goes hand in hand with the emergence of homeownership and the gradual penetration of credit as basic elements in the pursuit of livelihood. In this analysis, I expose a changing pattern whereby conflicts inherent to the production of social space and to the process of accumulation are progressively exacerbated. This transformation emerges at three different scales that are inextricably linked: the household, the neighborhood and the space of capital circulation – all of them regulated by the state. /// This research is based on 21 months of life and fieldwork in Ciutat Meridiana, a housing project on the immediate periphery of Barcelona. The rationale for choosing an impoverished neighborhood is simple: it is in the lowest regions of the urban space that the tensions inherent to the reproduction of a particular mode of production and a particular kind of society are often most clearly expressed.

This paper explores the relationships between local or national housing markets and recent historic transformations in global capitalism. It proposes a periodization of developments in housing markets, policies and practices distinguishing between, first, the pre-modern period; second, the modern or Fordist period; third, the flexible neoliberal or post-Fordist period; and fourth, the late neoliberal or emerging post-crisis period. This periodization is a heuristic device that helps to make sense of the interdependence of national housing markets and the global financial crisis. The argument is not that the crisis caused the breakdown of the post-Fordist housing model, but rather that the shift to this model introduced certain dynamics to housing markets that a few decades later culminated into a crisis. The start of the Great Moderation was also the start of the financialization of states and economies in various domains, particularly housing. In making this argument, I unpack the concept of the Great Moderation: what appeared to be a structural moderation of macroeconomic cycles was in fact the build-up of a bubble economy. The 1970s and early 1980s as well as the post-2007 crisis are critical junctures in the development of housing. The Great Moderation was also a Great Excess in terms of rising inequality and excessive credit and debt, suggestive of a finance-led regime of accumulation.
Keywords: global financial crisis, Great Moderation, financialization, periodization, regime of accumulation, debt

The aim of this study is to examine the association between sense of community, walking, and neighborhood design characteristics. The current study is based on a sub-sample of participants (n ¼ 609) from the US Atlanta SMARTRAQ study who completed a telephone survey capturing physical activity patterns, neighborhood perceptions, and social interactions. Objective measures of neighborhood form were also computed. Univariate and multivariate models (General Linear Models (GLM)) were used to examine the association between sense of community (SofC) and aspects of the built environment, physical activity, and neighborhood perceptions. In multivariate models the impact on SofC was examined with progressive adjustment for demographics characteristics followed by walking behavior, neighborhood design features, neighborhood perceptions and time spent traveling in a car.

This article examines the role of Brutalist architecture in post-war housing, taking Le Corbusier’s premise that ‘tomorrow belongs to nobody’. It tests thenotion from the call for papers that ‘contemporary needs are more importantthan remote futures’ and explores ‘the relationship of the present and thefuture in planning and urbanism’. Rather than considering ‘contemporary’ as referring to ‘today’, it takes a longer-term perspective, based upon the thinking of Brutalist architects, which interprets ‘contemporary needs’ as relating to the developing needs of communities and stakeholders over time, from their building’s inception up to today. Starting by placing Brutalism within the development of twentieth-century architecture and housing, the paper
considers the ongoing reappraisal of the buildings of the period as heritage, the different agents involved, and the diverse challenges presented for the care of the buildings and communities who live and work in them. The notions of ‘contemporariness’ and ‘context’ demonstrated by the principle of ‘as found’ in Brutalism are investigated, focusing on how they reintroduced ‘community’ as a primary consideration. This approach is manifested in the Low Rise High Density (LRHD) projects of the late 1960s and in the longer term, many of the principles underpinning sustainability today. Review of current heritage practice takes a suggestion from architectural historian Alan Powers, proposing that we refocus on the ‘essence’ of buildings rather than
on their materiality, which can also be seen in today’s practice, and considers how this ‘essence’ should be extended to include community. The article concludes by considering how an integrated approach, drawing together the different themes of heritage, planning, and housing policy, might improve current practice to the benefit of both buildings and communities.

There are two dominant discourses on finance: in the first, finance is the great enabler; in the second, finance is the great divider, the driver of social exclusion. What starts out as finance as an enabler can easily turn into finance as a divider. If someone's mortgage loan application is accepted, they may see finance as the enabler of homeownership, but if the loan conditions are predatory in nature, finance becomes a means of extraction. This paper focuses on two ways in which housing finance creates harm: redlining and predatory lending. This paper does not discuss new empirical research on redlining or predatory lending, but provides a selective overview of studies documenting these two forms of housing finance as harm. These two forms of housing finance share a number of characteristics related to exclusion, social groups, geography and local impact. Mortgage redlining is a form of place-based discrimination from housing finance. By delineating neighborhoods in which lenders do not grant mortgage loans they exclude households who want to buy a house and those who cannot sell their house. Predatory lending is a subset of subprime lending. Predatory loans are designed to exploit vulnerable borrowers. The rise of predatory lending had little to do with the mantra of emerging homeownership markets. In conclusion, mortgage lenders have the power to harm potential borrowers through direct exclusion (mortgage redlining) or indirect exclusion through overpriced loans (subprime and in particular predatory lending). 
Keywords: mortgage finance, redlining, subprime lending, predatory loans, social exclusion, homeownership

Following the financial crisis, an extensive literature has examined the vulnerabilities facing mortgagors in default and foreclosure. However, in addition to these “overt casualties” of the crash, many households are struggling to meet their mortgage payments by enduring severe cutbacks to their quality of life. The experiences of these “unrevealed casualties” of the financial crisis and the coping strategies they employ to respond to mortgage stress remain under-explored. Drawing on survey data of Irish mortgagors (n = 433), this paper examines the impacts of mortgage stress upon quality of life and mortgagors’ coping strategies to respond to their financial difficulties. The findings suggest that mortgage stress affects a broader range of households than previously considered; mortgage stressed households adopt a range of expenditure, employment, finance and housing-related responses; and more punitive responses correlate with greater mortgage stress levels, thereby providing a fuller account of the real cost of coping with the crisis impacts.

This paper describes the outcome of a research program carried out by the IIBW to support the Romanian Government in redesigning the national housing law in order to cope with specific problems on the Romanian housing market and to put together and expand various existing legislations. Housing reforms in the process of transition have tended to favour home ownership with the negative side effect of reducing tenure choice and decimating the supply of affordable and tenure-secure rental housing. This paper therefore concentrates on three major topics within the restructuring of Romanian Housing Law that permit integrating European best practice in the field of housing policy. First, rental housing legislation is reconsidered and a market-based relative price control based on the German experience and on written contracts is proposed. Second, a new PPP-housing law building on the framework of PPP-social housing providers in Austria is considered. A rigid frame of checks and balances and public compensation of social service obligations are core elements. Third, special attention is paid to the compliance of proposed measures with EU-legislation on competition, which is of major importance for any legal recommendations to be applicable. We present possible solutions for the challenge to combine a consistent overall structure of a new housing law with the necessity to integrate functional parts of existing legislation and elements of European best practice. The proposed legal changes are designed to foster the development of a functional long-term private and social rental market in order to meet the housing needs of the Romanian population.

There is much evidence of rising inequalities across advanced economies. This paper argues for the special position of housing equity in inequality dynamics while challenging a persistent “ideology of mass homeownership” as a widespread and equalizing mechanism of asset accumulation. Contemporary dynamics of diminished homeownership access contrast to the continued attractiveness of real estate among those with capital and recent growths in private landlordism. The research presents an explorative examination of the housing wealth dimension of inequality through the British case and assesses empirically the dimensions of: equity concentration, inter and intra-generational divergences, and the role of private landlordism. The research points to the starkly concentrated nature of housing equity and significant trends towards increasing disparities, with especially disadvantaged prospects
among younger cohorts. The recent emergence of a substantial secondary rental-property market presents a further key dimension of wealth concentration. The research underscores the fundamental inequality of housing equity and brings into question rooted ideologies of housing-asset-based economic security in an era of individualized welfare responsibility.

AbstractDo globalization and Europeanization lead to the deterritorialization of European mortgage markets? Neither economic globalization nor EU policies have resulted in one European mortgage market. The various European mortgage markets are still quite different from one another in many respects. In most countries national lenders continue to dominate the market even though regulation itself has been internationalized to some extent. Deterritorialization has been slow for various reasons: tax, law, cultural and structural differences play a part, but the limited market share of mortgage intermediaries and the unequal treatment of foreign mortgage lenders in some countries also form a barrier. Path-dependent trajectories are highly important, but can sometimes be bypassed by global processes or downplayed by the entry of foreign firms. The secondary mortgage market is increasingly becoming globalized, while most primary mortgage markets remain largely national. The financial crisis may temporarily slow down securitization, while simultaneously both decreasing and increasing the globalization of mortgage regulation, firms and markets.Do globalization and Europeanization lead to the deterritorialization of European mortgage markets? Neither economic globalization nor EU policies have resulted in one European mortgage market. The various European mortgage markets are still quite different from one another in many respects. In most countries national lenders continue to dominate the market even though regulation itself has been internationalized to some extent. Deterritorialization has been slow for various reasons: tax, law, cultural and structural differences play a part, but the limited market share of mortgage intermediaries and the unequal treatment of foreign mortgage lenders in some countries also form a barrier. Path-dependent trajectories are highly important, but can sometimes be bypassed by global processes or downplayed by the entry of foreign firms. The secondary mortgage market is increasingly becoming globalized, while most primary mortgage markets remain largely national. The financial crisis may temporarily slow down securitization, while simultaneously both decreasing and increasing the globalization of mortgage regulation, firms and markets.RésuméLa mondialisation et l'européanisation conduisent-elles à la déterritorialisation des marchés hypothécaires européens? Ni la mondialisation économique ni les politiques de l'UE n'ont produit un marché unique européen du crédit hypothécaire. Au sein de l'Europe, les marchés hypothécaires restent très différents à plusieurs titres. Dans la plupart des pays, les établissements de prêt nationaux dominent encore le marché, même si on a relativement internationalisé la réglementation. La déterritorialisation se fait lentement pour plusieurs raisons; fiscalité, législation, différences culturelles et structurelles pèsent, mais la part de marché restreinte qu'occupent les intermédiaires en prêts hypothécaires, ainsi que le traitement inégal réservé aux prêteurs étrangers dans certains pays, constituent également un obstacle. Les chemins de dépendance sont particulièrement importants, bien qu'ils puissent parfois être contournés par des processus mondialisés, ou être minimisés par l'accès de sociétés étrangères. En matière de crédit hypothécaire, le marché secondaire se mondialise de plus en plus, tandis que les marchés primaires demeurent en grande partie nationaux. La crise financière va peut-être ralentir temporairement la titrisation, tout en atténuant et renforçant parallèlement la mondialisation de la réglementation, des sociétés et des marchés du crédit hypothécaire.La mondialisation et l'européanisation conduisent-elles à la déterritorialisation des marchés hypothécaires européens? Ni la mondialisation économique ni les politiques de l'UE n'ont produit un marché unique européen du crédit hypothécaire. Au sein de l'Europe, les marchés hypothécaires restent très différents à plusieurs titres. Dans la plupart des pays, les établissements de prêt nationaux dominent encore le marché, même si on a relativement internationalisé la réglementation. La déterritorialisation se fait lentement pour plusieurs raisons; fiscalité, législation, différences culturelles et structurelles pèsent, mais la part de marché restreinte qu'occupent les intermédiaires en prêts hypothécaires, ainsi que le traitement inégal réservé aux prêteurs étrangers dans certains pays, constituent également un obstacle. Les chemins de dépendance sont particulièrement importants, bien qu'ils puissent parfois être contournés par des processus mondialisés, ou être minimisés par l'accès de sociétés étrangères. En matière de crédit hypothécaire, le marché secondaire se mondialise de plus en plus, tandis que les marchés primaires demeurent en grande partie nationaux. La crise financière va peut-être ralentir temporairement la titrisation, tout en atténuant et renforçant parallèlement la mondialisation de la réglementation, des sociétés et des marchés du crédit hypothécaire.

This paper explores the resurgence in western countries of the use of the home as a place of work. Using data from the European Working Conditions Survey it shows that by 2015 about 1 in 6 EU workers worked at home at least some of the time, this proportion being much higher in northern and western states and increasingly among men in non-manual occupations in those contexts. It argues that this trend supports an extension of traditional analyses of housing as both a consumption and an investment good to its use as a capital good akin to factories and offices. Faced with a more complex trade-off, households are adapting the decisions they make about their housing; in particular, freed, completely or in part, from the need to commute to work, their locational decisions. The paper concludes that the use of the home as a workplace leads to many important areas of investigation for housing studies researchers.

Many scholars interpret the contraction in social housing and the expansion of home ownership as reflections of a reduced role for the state and an increase in the marketisation of housing. This paper challenges this interpretation by pointing to two weaknesses in its conceptual underpinnings. One is its failure to distinguish between housing as capital (traded in the purchase market for dwellings) and housing as a service (traded in the rental market for accommodation), leading to an underestimate of the extent and diversity of continuing state intervention in housing. The other problem is a narrow focus on the balance between market and state which neglects the role of self-provisioning in the household as a form of production. The alternative view proposed here is, first, that forms of state intervention in the markets for housing capital and services are so diverse and complex that a more comprehensive analysis is needed before conclusions on trends in the state's overall role can be reached, and, second, that while home ownership reflects a dominant role for the market in the distribution of housing capital, it reflects a familialisation of housing services -it enables households to self-provision themselves with accommodation and thereby remove this service from the realm of both market exchange and state provision. The paper also suggests that the welfare benefit of home ownership lies not only in its widely recognised social insurance effect but also in the efficiency and cost-reduction effects which self-provisioning of housing provides.

Following the 2008 financial crisis, an extensive geographic literature has examined mortgage market financialisation and its socio-spatial impacts, particularly patterns of mortgage defaults and foreclosures in U.S. cities. However, the local geographic impacts remain under-examined in European contexts, including Ireland, limiting the ability to accurately identify the casualties of the crisis and understand the manner in which they are affected. This paper draws on quantitative survey data to examine the Irish mortgage arrears crisis in a suburban spatial context. The socio-economic and mortgage characteristics of households struggling with arrears are examined, while participants’ open-ended responses elaborate upon the drivers of arrears and impacts upon households’ quality of life. The results demonstrate the extreme distress faced by suburban mortgagors and the role of the banks’ underwriting practices in driving arrears difficulties. The research questions Ireland’s model of homeownership provision, particularly as home repossessions are expected to increase through 2015 and onwards.

In the late twentieth century, homeownership became entrenched in a wider societal project associated with transformations in the economy and increased social inclusion. The ‘promise of homeownership’ asserted the potential of mortgaged owner-occupation in providing all with not just a stable home, but also the chance to accumulate assets and establish economic security.

Underlying these ideologies was the implicit promise that homeownership can be widespread, equalizing and secure. Despite transformations in market conditions, especially since the Global Financial Crisis, such narratives have continued to drive policy approaches and support for marketised housing. Through an investigation of three ‘homeowner societies’ – the US, UK and Australia - the empirical evidence in this paper reveals declining access to homeownership, high levels of housing wealth concentration exacerbating social inequality, and intensifying housing price volatility undermining asset security. The paper contends that the socioeconomic potential of homeownership that has sustained the logic of housing policy for the last half decade may be increasingly recognized as a ‘false promise’ that has justified growing housing commodification, ongoing labour insecurity, and continued state retrenchment wherein housing markets increasingly function as a dimension of growing inequality and insecurity.

In recent years scholars have identified racial disparities in wealth and home ownership as crucial factors underlying patterns of racial inequality and residential segregation in American metropolitan housing markets. While numerous federal housing policies have been identified as responsible for reinforcing residential segregation and racial inequalities in home ownership, little research has focused on the segregative effects of the Section 235 program. As one component of the 1968 Housing Act, Section 235 was designed to shift the focus of federal housing policy away from dispensing aid to local housing authorities for building public housing to providing direct supply-side subsidies to the private sector to stimulate home ownership for nonwhites and the poor. Archival and census data, government reports and housing analyses, and oral histories and interviews are used to examine the segregative effects of the Section 235 program in Kansas City, Missouri from 1969 through the early 1970s. Findings indicate that while the housing subsidy program allowed a vast majority of participating white families to purchase “new” housing in suburban areas, most participating African American families purchased “existing” homes located in racially transitional neighborhoods in the inner city. These findings corroborate recent research showing how the market-centered focus of federal housing policy has impaired the ability of African Americans to accumulate wealth through home ownership and reinforced racially segregative housing patterns.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to show how some of the assumptions about the current financial crisis are wrong because they misunderstand what takes place in the mortgage market.
Design/methodology/approach: The paper discusses four wrong assumptions: one related to regulation, one to leveraging, one to subprime lending and one to predatory lending. It briefly discusses some policy implications.
Findings: (1) The role of the state in the mortgage market is more complex than suggested by those who blame the state for not doing anything. (2) The concept of leveraging can explain, at least in part, why the losses in financial markets are bigger than the losses in the housing market. (3) Many subprime loans were sold to prime borrowers. (4) Subprime lending was not designed to increase homeownership rates, but to fuel profits by exploiting vulnerable borrowers.
Practical implications (if applicable): It is too easy to argue that everyone made mistakes; most borrowers cannot be blamed for being sold risky, overpriced loans. A rescue plan is needed for defaulting borrowers and those already in foreclosure.
Originality/value: This paper does not present new research, but brings together research that demonstrates that the roots of the crisis in the mortgage market are in many ways different from what is suggested by professionals and journalists alike.
Keywords: Financial crisis, Credit crunch, Mortgage market, Securitization, Subprime lending, Predatory lending, Regulation

This study explored the hypothesis that acculturation is a risk factor for childhood lead poisoning in the Detroit area of Michigan. Blood lead levels (BLLs) were determined in 429 Arab American and African American children, aged 6 months to 15 years, who were receiving well-child examination in three Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) clinics in the city. Mean BLL was 3.8 ± 2.3 lg/dL (range: 1-18 lg/dL) and 3.3% of the children tested had blood lead values above the 10 lg/dL level of concern. Neither the age of the dwelling units nor ethnicity of the child was significantly associated with the BLL. Multivariable analyses instead identified a number of acculturation-related factors that are associated with elevation in blood lead including paternal education,

This article examines the role of Brutalist architecture in post-war housing, taking Le Corbusier’s premise that ‘tomorrow belongs to nobody’. It tests the notion from the call for papers that ‘contemporary needs are more important than remote futures’ and explores ‘the relationship of the present and the future in planning and urbanism’. Rather than considering ‘contemporary’ as referring to ‘today’, it takes a longer-term perspective, based upon the thinking of Brutalist architects, which interprets ‘contemporary needs’ as relating to the developing needs of communities and stakeholders over time, from their building’s inception up to today. Starting by placing Brutalism within the development of twentieth-century architecture and housing, the paper considers the ongoing reappraisal of the buildings of the period as heritage, the different agents involved, and the diverse challenges presented for the care of the buildings and communities who live and work in them. The notions of ‘...

This paper examines transitions in the rental shelter market of a mediumsized city in Zimbabwe. Based upon an extensive study conducted in 1990, and more recent research (1993)(1994)(1995), it analyses the rental housing market as it was a decade after Independence and consequent transitions since the introduction of structural adjustment in 1991. It maintains that increased privatization of the rental shelter market has exacerbated polarization between vulnerable and privileged renters, in a situation characterized by high construction costs, bottlenecks of supply, and a difficult economic context. Vulnerability of and within households is recognized. This housing situation is then compared with that of Harare, the capital, and the overall urban shelter situation within Zimbabwe. The paper ends by reiterating Tipple's [(1994) The need for new urban housing in sub-Saharan Africa: problem or opportunity? African Affairs, 2(l), 24-361 recommendation that governments consider subdividing housing units for home-ownership in an effort to ease escalating housing vulnerability.

Determination of the demand for home ownership is analysed. Determinants include prices and short-and medium-term price changes, public regulation (regulation of house rent, housing subsidies, taxation), competition from alternative residence forms (measured by supply of subsidized housing), social composition of population (age, social benefit receivers, household composition, civil status, education, nationality), economic ability (income), and congestion (measured by population density and degree of urbanisation). The study applies Danish aggregate data for 270 Danish municipalities, available annually for the period 1999-2004. The effects of determinants on home ownership rates are allowed to be heterogeneous by years and municipalities using temporally and geographically expanded coefficients. Considerable parametric heterogeneity over time as well as across municipalities is found, even when residual dynamic heterogeneity and interdependency as well as residual spatial spillover is controlled for.

Compared to the extensive assistance afforded to Ireland’s banks since 2008, interventions to assist troubled mortgagors have been limited, with Government and the banks strongly resisting debt write-downs in favour of a policy of mortgage forbearance. Forbearance involves restructuring a debt’s contractual terms to ease a debtor’s repayment schedule. In practice, forbearance has been a strategy of ‘extend and pretend’ where lenders have been slow to offer restructurings or have relied on temporary interventions that impose minimal costs upon them. Forbearance benefited lenders by negating the pressure to enforce possession of devalued property, while ensuring borrowers remain solely responsible for outstanding debts. Despite the emphasis on forbearance, few studies have examined borrowers’ experiences of forbearance, particularly their experience of communicating their difficulties with their lenders. This paper firstly utilises national data to examine forbearance as a strategic response by the Irish authorities to the mortgage arrears crisis. Secondly, mortgage-stressed borrowers’ experiences of forbearance are examined using data drawn from a survey (n=433) of mortgagors which dealt specifically with mortgage payment issues following the crash. The article documents a shift in lenders’ arrears management strategies from 2013, with an increased emphasis on longer-term restructurings but also an increasing appetite for repossession.

The fate of used electronic products (e-waste) is of increasing concern because of their toxicity and the growing volume of e-waste. Addressing these concerns requires developing the recycling infrastructure, but good estimates of the volume of e-waste stored by US households are still unavailable. In this context, we make two contributions based on a national random survey of 2136 US households. First, we explain how much e-waste is stored by US households using count models. Significant explanatory variables include age, marital and employment status, ethnicity, household size, previous e-waste recycling behavior, and to some extent education, home ownership, and understanding the consequences of recycling, but neither income nor knowledge of e-waste recycling laws. Second, we estimate that on average, each US household has 4.1 small (10 pounds) and 2.4 large e-waste items in storage. Although these numbers are likely lower bounds, they are higher than recent US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates (based on narrower product categories). This suggests that the backlog of e-waste in the US is likely larger than generally believed; it calls for developing the recycling infrastructure but also for targeted recycling campaigns.

Past decades of economic growth, relatively widespread employment security and expanding mortgage markets promoted growing homeownership. Recent years have witnessed this growth undercut across advanced economies, evidenced by a rise in other tenures and increasing housing precarity. Studies have shown that these housing outcomes follow more fundamental changes in labour markets. By adapting the established concept of labour market dualization to housing, this paper examines how employment and housing positions are intertwined under late capitalism, and how their relationship has changed through the Global Financial Crisis. Examining the salient case of the Netherlands through household-level data from the LISS panel, we demonstrate that being a labour market ‘outsider’ vastly increases the likelihood of being an ‘outsider’ across housing market dimensions, in terms of housing equity, affordability and prospective asset accumulation. Comparing housing and labour dualization over 2008 and 2016, we further show that the share of multiply disadvantaged households has grown substantially, both among labour market insiders and outsiders.