State Led Gentrification and The Changing Geography of Market Oriented Housing Policies

Introduction:

The changing nature of tenure restructuring also brings about a changing geography: while urban renewal was mostly concentrated in post-war neighbourhoods of socio-economic decline, social housing sales are increasingly concentrated in inner city neighbourhoods where already existing gentrification processes are amplified.

Governments in a wide range of contexts have long pursued policies of social mixing to disperse poverty concentrations, attract middle class residents, and manage disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Drawing on longitudinal and spatial housing data for the case of Amsterdam, this paper shows that the dominant instruments to facilitate social mixing have changed over time. Policy focus has shifted from large-scale urban renewal projects and the demolition of social rental housing to the sale of existing social rental dwellings.

Literature:

Tenure and Welfare State Restructuring:

Tenure restructuring may be pursued for a range of different reasons, using different instruments at different locations. Urban and neighbourhood level policies intersect here with national policies and broader trends of welfare state restructuring. Most European welfare states have, through policies of de-regulation and re-regulation, shifted their attention and resources over recent decades towards enabling market forces. Market-oriented reforms have solidified the privileged position of private property and stimulated the private accumulation of wealth. Homeownership has substantially grown under conditions of welfare state restructuring, as it is ideologically cast as the most desirable form of tenure.

Tenure Restructuring and Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods:

At the urban level, a key reason for policy-makers to engage in policies of tenure mixing is to achieve a change in population composition and reduce levels of residential socio-economic and/or ethnic segregation. High levels of segregation are often assumed to have additional negative consequences for those living in areas with a high concentration of poverty. The assumed underlying causal mechanisms for these additional effects are, for example, a lack of positive role models living in a neighbourhood, a negative work ethic, the lack of useful local social networks, and the stigmatization of neighbourhoods. These assumptions form the core of the “neighbourhood effects” thesis.

Tenure Mixing and Gentrification:

Policies of tenure mixing and social mixing have frequently been associated with state-led gentrification processes, because social rental housing and low-income tenants typically have to make way for more expensive owner occupied dwellings and a higher income clientele. Furthermore, in certain cases, it may be considered a form of “gentrification by stealth”, as the language of social mixing conceals the class-based changes induced by gentrification. Social mixing may bring about the involuntary displacement of longer term tenants, although in the Dutch context, the relocation process is guided and compensated for, which mitigates some of the negative effects.

Changing Instruments and Changing Geography of Tenure Restructuring:

The two dominant instruments used to reduce the size of the social rental stock are demolition and sales. In 1997, various stakeholders, including the Amsterdam housing associations and the municipal government, signed a first “Social Housing Sales Covenant” allowing housing associations to sell part of their property to individual households. After a slow start, the number of yearly social housing sales quickly increased after 2002, partly because sales became an explicit local policy goal. Only 434 dwellings were sold in 2002, but this number increased to 2402 sales in 2005.

Conclusion:

This paper has shown that questions of how and where local states pursue policies of tenure restructuring are closely interrelated, as well as how these questions are influenced by their broader societal and policy contexts. The case of Amsterdam documents various shifts in urban housing policies. The demise of social rent has accelerated under conditions of market-oriented housing restructuring. Furthermore, while policies used to focus on urban renewal and the demolition of social rental dwellings, they now primarily operate through the sale of existing social rental dwellings. The global financial crisis has spurred this shift, although it had been set in motion beforehand.

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