Interested in social housing, global wealth and the role of corporations in housing? Look no further than this session, which is sure to stimulate great discussion on a range of themes. The full abstracts are below.
Presentations from these authors and a live Q&A session are available to all HSA members. Book here
1. Elanor Warwick and Kevin McGeogh Ebbsfleet Development Corporation as a new form of public sector leadership delivering 21st Century New Towns
The post-war New Towns were the high point of centralised public large-scale housing programmes. To meet current ambitious housing targets new settlements of all scales from garden villages, garden cities to full-size new towns are needed. The example of Ebbsfleet Garden City shows despite policy & political support, familiar planning, governance & delivery problems remain. This paper compares recent government criteria for new settlements, revealing a diluted trajectory from promoting sustainable development to facilitating private sector investment in exchange for guaranteed housing delivery. Incorporating heathy new town & garden city design principles in the NPPF shows that as local placemaking processes are rediscovered, so the historic decision-making mechanisms that delivered New Towns require reinvention. Yet recent legislative changes to enable locally-led development corporations highlight the tensions between top-down national new settlements policy, market freedoms & localism. The legal & policy mechanisms to deliver new sustainable settlements with local ownership of decision-making may be in place, but innovative public sector leadership & new partnerships are still required to address issues of local accountability, practical housing delivery at scale, long-term stewardship & governance. This paper explores Ebbsfleet Development Corporation’s evolving role & joint working with the NHS, housebuilders & housing associations to deliver a locally-led Garden City.
2. Richard Goulding Transforming social housing into an asset class: the entry of REITs into the English supported housing sector
This paper argues the financialisation of social housing has been characterised by contradictions between its use within the welfare state and a development model treating land as a financial asset. Exploring the entry of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) into specialised supported housing in England since 2014, the research focuses on lease-based finance models targeting supported housing’s exemption from housing benefit reforms under austerity policies. Empirically tracing the emergence of this new business model, the paper advances theoretical debates over financialisation by analysing the extent to which supported housing as a welfare service presents barriers to its commodification as a profitable asset. Such limits are seen most clearly in the emerging risks of the development models used within the supported housing sub-sector, with one housing association nearly collapsing in 2018 following over-rapid expansion enabled by lease-based finance. Rather than social housing passively ‘absorbing’ surplus capital however, the paper argues financialisation has entailed attempts by REITs, the regulator, local government and social housing providers to govern risks arising from these contradictions through finance, creating tensions that must be continually managed if financialisation is to proceed. In making this argument, the paper contributes to a wider research agenda analysing financialisation not as an inexorable process but one subject to limits and contradictions, even as ultimate liabilities for risks are transferred from financial institutions downwards onto providers and, ultimately, tenants.