Commodification and the ‘housing crisis’

The theme of this paper is that housing is an outcome of economic position, personal vulnerabilities, and social factors such as discrimination among other areas. This allows the themed section to be more nuanced in its understanding by recognising varied crises and experiences within housing rather than a single crisis. In doing so, this builds on a history of research examining the intersection of housing inequalities and deprivation in Britain (see for example Coates and Silburn, Reference Coates and Silburn1973; Rex and Moore, Reference Rex and Moore1969), but raises questions specific to contemporary challenges. Moving away from a binary of those with homes and those without, there is a growing grey area of those in precarious, temporary, and unsuitable housing. Within this grey area, there has been a notable increase in the number of houses of multiple occupation (HMOs) to the point where it is estimated that there are approximately 500k HMOs in the UK (Wilson and Cromarty, Reference Wilson and Cromarty2019). At the same time, there is a growth in the number of people in temporary accommodation, with temporary being an elusive term that can cover a period of multiple years, including over 125 thousand children in over 99,000 households by 2022 (DLUHC and MHCLG, 2023; Wilson and Barton, Reference Wilson and Barton2023). Additionally, there is the growing number of households being accommodated ‘out of area’ (Iafrati, Reference Iafrati2021) whereby vulnerable households with a statutory duty to be accommodated are placed in another local authority area, sometimes many miles away from family, friends, service providers, and other support networks. Notably, this disproportionately affects Black and Asian-led households (Cooper, Reference Cooper2023).

In addition to this grey area, it is important to recognise an ‘off the radar’ dimension to precarious housing, an area of housing on the fringes of legality that is not always instantly visible. This includes experiences of housing not necessarily evident to the public and not reliably measured, and with limited appetite for policy interventions. Specifically, this includes sofa surfing (Fitzpatrick et al., Reference Fitzpatrick, Watts and Perry2021) as well as ‘beds in sheds’ (Robertson, Reference Robertson2017) and accounts of ‘sex for rent’ (Hansard, 2018). Additionally, there is the ‘shadow private rented sector’ (Spencer et al., Reference Spencer, Reeve-Lewis, Rugg and Barata2020) accommodating over 130 thousand people in the UK experiencing modern-day slavery through labour and sexual exploitation (Global Slavery Index, 2018).

This state of the art paper consequently explores the way in which people with economic and personal vulnerabilities are disproportionately impacted by the legacy of austerity and neoliberalism, which contributes to commodification of housing. In doing so, the paper recognises barriers to housing in economic terms such as low pay and welfare reforms (Preece et al., Reference Preece, Hickman and Pattison2020; Wilkinson and Ortega-Alcazar, Reference Wilkinson and Ortega-AlcÁzar2017; Jacobs and Manzi, Reference Jacobs and Manzi2013). However, this paper also acknowledges the impacts of non-economic factors such as mental health and substance abuse (Dobson, Reference Dobson2022; England et al., Reference England, Thomas, Mackie and Browne-Gott2022). Undoubtedly, these areas can overlap and have varied connections, but the papers in this themed section also recognise a degree of distinction. In this respect, commodification

Consequently, as commodification of housing constitutes what some describe as a ‘major barrier to its equitable distribution, with construction and allocation determined not by need but by the accumulation of capital’ (Matthews, Reference Matthews2017: 44), it can be presumed that a person’s relationship to capital such as income and welfare will influence their relationship to housing. With this in mind, Jacobs and Manzi (Reference Jacobs and Manzi2019) define commodification in terms of a process to ‘privatise public housing, extend homeownership and curtail the role of the state’ as part of ‘neoliberal policymaking’ and a greater focus on the housing as a financial asset rather than a welfare need. Whilst the success of extending homeownership can be questioned, the parallel growth of the private rented sector supports an argument that housing is increasingly commodified. Commodification therefore becomes a ‘technique of governance’ (Preece et al., Reference Preece, Hickman and Pattison2020) that has exacerbated social divisions (Byrne, Reference Byrne2020).

However, the determinants in accessing housing go further than capital alone to include vulnerability and discrimination that play significant, if complex, roles in experiences of the housing crisis. For example, racial discrimination within housing has been recognised as a complex theme (Bramley et al., Reference Bramley, Fitzpatrick, McIntyre and Johnsen2022), and there remains ‘dire need of up-to-date research that explores how increasing diversity coupled with strains in the housing market differently affect black and minority ethnic households’ (Shankley and Finney, Reference Shankley and Finney2020: 150). At the same time, there has been introduced a ‘suite of policy reforms that have fundamentally destabilised the homemaking capacities of hundreds of thousands of Britain’s most economically and socially vulnerable citizens’ (Nowicki, Reference Nowicki2018: 658).

The concept of a housing crisis should therefore be seen as diverse in its nature and has been used in different ways by different people, which reflects the breadth of its constituent elements and the ways in which it can be interpreted. For politicians, under-supply (Wilson and Barton, Reference Wilson and Barton2018), missed housing targets, and the role of government have been ongoing issues (Wilson and Barton, Reference Wilson and Barton2023) that form a widely accepted starting point for understanding some elements of contemporary housing challenges. For campaigning groups, greater focus has been placed on affordability and the way in which under-supply may be understood in more nuanced terms of housing tenure, type, and affordability (Centrepoint, 2023; Gibbons, Reference Gibbons2021; Bramley, Reference Bramley2018; Wilson and Barton, Reference Wilson and Barton2018). Consequently, there is recognition that areas such as discrimination and personal vulnerabilities explored in this themed section influence people’s experiences of housing and create what might be seen as more focused areas of housing crisis.

Recognising historical precedence, Aneurin Bevan in the post-war years identified the need for slum clearances and to develop a modernist vision of housing estates where ‘the working man, the doctor and the clergyman will live in close proximity to each other’ amidst the optimism of a ‘living tapestry of a mixed community’ (Creighton, Reference Creighton2021; Mayo and Newman, Reference Mayo and Newman2014). Despite such optimism, the Cathy Come Home television drama in 1968 characterised personal challenges of housing, whilst the 1970s witnessed the failure of a post-war housing vision that had created ‘concrete jungles’ (Boughton, Reference Boughton2019) that prompted a political shift in housing policy. The 1980s Right to Buy failed to be the solution that was needed as it led to residualisation (Pearce and Vine, Reference Pearce and Vine2014; Murie, Reference Murie1997) and a decline in the stock of affordable housing. Whilst a more nuanced understanding of housing crisis might be useful alongside more non-partisan political debate, the housing crisis was thrust once more into the public gaze with the tragic fire in Grenfell Tower (Robbins, Reference Robbins2020; Heslop and Ormerod, Reference Heslop and Ormerod2020) and ‘provoked painful awareness of the extent to which social housing and the residents it notionally shelters has been de-prioritised, de-funded and uncared for’ (Harris et al., Reference Harris, Nowicki and Brickell2019: 158). Whilst problems beyond the control of the individual, such as politics and crises have historically shaped housing policy and studies (Robertson, Reference Robertson2017; Malpass, Reference Malpass1986; Alderson, Reference Alderson1962), the exact configuration changes over time as the nature of housing stock, economic factors, and social influences similarly evolve. In this themed section, the subsequent papers explore some of the specific areas.

But here lies the problem. Whilst the term ‘housing crisis’ has become a widely used term, it remains somewhat unhelpful as it neither defines the causes nor the solutions. Consequently, it is important to reflect on the pervasive nature of a broken housing system in the UK that is based on entrenched structural problems rather than the temporary problems inferred by the term ‘crisis’. Heslop and Ormerod (Reference Heslop and Ormerod2020: 159) excellently frame this position by stating that:

Picking apart the concept of crisis in contemporary Social Policy, a useful starting point therefore is to place housing provision and access to housing in an economic context. Reflecting on people’s experiences of housing in this context and recognising their own economic and personal challenges, it is possible to identify commodification as a process that ‘poses a threat to the housing outcomes of, especially, the young and those on lower incomes’ (Hick and Stephens, Reference Hick and Stephens2023: 91). To this end, housing is an outcome of not just housing supply factors, but of diverse economic factors, as well as personal vulnerabilities and experiences of discrimination and marginalisation.

Acknowledging a complexity beyond the headlines, Gallent et al. (Reference Gallent, de Magalhaes and Freire Trigo2021) consequently identify a breadth to the housing crisis that goes beyond looking at under-supply, whilst Mulheirn (Reference Mulheirn2019) argues that focusing on under-supply is misleading and risks taking housing strategy in the wrong direction. Linked to such concerns, Imrie (Reference Imrie2021) highlights that people’s economic barriers rather than under-supply shape people’s access to housing. In other words, it might be more accurate to consider ourselves in a housing affordability crisis where growing numbers of people find it difficult to meet housing costs, including homeownership, private rent, and even rent in the social rented sector (Byrne, Reference Byrne2020; Preece et al., Reference Preece, Hickman and Pattison2020). With this in mind, Imrie (Reference Imrie2021) points out that greater supply alone, if similarly unaffordable, may merely exacerbate existing inequalities, with inequality potentially understood in terms of intergenerational wealth inequality, worsening experiences of poverty, reinforcing racial inequalities, and failing to meet the welfare needs of the most vulnerable. In this respect, housing inequality defines both access to, and outcomes of, housing. In doing so, the conceptualisation of crisis within neoliberalism has led to an increasingly deregulated and market led approach to housing policy that has fuelled unaffordability (Brill and Raco, Reference Brill and Raco2021).

Vulnerability and housing

Consequently, it is becoming evident that people’s experiences of housing are diverse by nature of the barriers they face. These barriers may well be economic, but they may also be determined by personal challenges and vulnerabilities. Whilst the ongoing ability to maintain security of housing may be a goal for many, it is important to recognise how, for some, the barriers may at times be insurmountable. However, in the current political climate, there appears to be limited appetite to address either the nature of housing supply or the barriers people face despite the government’s apparent acceptance in their 2017 white paper of their role in Fixing our Broken Housing Market (DCLG, 2017; Lyons et al., Reference Lyons, Murphy, Snelling and Green2017). The extent to which a change in government in the UK in July 2024 will make a difference to housing policy remains an area on which we will wait to see. Part of previous governments’ limited appetite to comprehensively address the housing crisis may have emanated from a position of taking a narrow view of homelessness (Wilson and Barton, Reference Wilson and Barton2021) rather than a broader understanding of precarious housing and its proximity to homelessness. At the same time, governments have overseen a decline in affordable housing and social rented properties, especially in the South-East of England (Wilson and Barton, Reference Wilson and Barton2022). Whilst housing policy has been devolved to some extent and has distinctions across the four nations of the UK, the significance of this paper is to explore the context within which people are able to access housing, with specific barriers being explored in subsequent papers in this themed section. Therefore, broadening a focus beyond the supply dimensions of housing, it is important to consider the barriers people face and how these barriers can be understood through a synthesis of economics and vulnerability. The intersecting relationship between economics and personal vulnerabilities is a complex area, and it is beyond the scope of this state of the art paper to do justice to such an issue. However, whilst poverty will shape people’s access to housing, so too will experiences of discrimination, health challenges, and mental health. It is undoubtedly the case that personal vulnerabilities may lead to economic challenges and poverty, but they can also be seen as being distinct in terms of policy interventions required to address root causes.

This intersection of economics and vulnerability can be broken into two areas. Firstly, the commodification of housing is predicated on allocation according to access to finances within an ‘ideological rationale’ of neoliberalism (Jacobs and Manzi, Reference Jacobs and Manzi2019). This is a significant point because, as seen above, the housing crisis can be understood as an affordability crisis, thereby recognising connections between affordability and commodification. In this respect, the rising cost of housing has been understood as a cause of poverty within studies of in-work poverty (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2023; Stone, Reference Stone2022; McNeil et al., Reference McNeil, Parkes, Garthwaite and Patrick2021; Corlett, Reference Corlett2021). Poulter et al. (Reference Poulter, Eberhardt, Moore and Windgassen2023: 2) recognise how the ‘Complex and interacting conditions have contributed to the rise of IWP [in work poverty] including increased housing costs, austerity and welfare reform’. Additionally, despite a previous period of relatively low increase in private rent, we are now seeing a period where private rents are increasing by nearly 5 per cent per year (Harari et al., Reference Harari, Francis-Devine, Bolton and Keep2023). At the same time, and marking ‘a fundamental change in the UK’s housing system’, the last two decades have witnessed a doubling in size of the private rented sector (PRS) and younger adults are now more likely to remain in the PRS into their forties and it has overtaken owner occupation for younger adults in what has been characterised as ‘generation rent’ (Bailey, Reference Bailey2020; McKee et al., Reference McKee, Moore, Soaita and Crawford2017), although it has also been critically viewed as lacking nuance (McKee and Soaita, Reference McKee and Soaita2018). Bailey (Reference Bailey2020) also recognises the growing numbers of low-income households that find themselves in an insecure PRS, which stands in contrast to the social rented sector in other ‘liberal welfare regimes’. At the same time, despite the government hegemony of work being a route out of poverty and the binary of workers and shirkers (Hills, Reference Hills2014), there has been a rise in precarious work. Increased levels of gig economy employment, zero-hour contracts, and underemployment have disadvantaged people in relation to the commodification of housing, particularly young people and migrants (Lombard, Reference Lombard2021; Buzzeo et al., Reference Buzzeo, Byford, Martin and Newton2019).

Secondly, it is also important to recognise the concept of personal vulnerability. To understand the housing crisis solely in economic terms of affordability is only half the story as, for some, the barriers to housing can also be non-financial (England et al., Reference England, Thomas, Mackie and Browne-Gott2022) as well as recognising the impact of government funding cuts on the most vulnerable (McCormack and Federowicz, Reference McCormack and Fedorowicz2022; Dobson, Reference Dobson2022). The relationship between the two is complex, but it can be imagined that poverty and vulnerability connect to create a dialectic of barriers to housing security, such as being able to access appropriate housing, being able to meet housing costs (Hardie, Reference Hardie2021), and not to be at risk of ‘no fault’ eviction. Typically, such barriers may include legal definitions of vulnerability where a local authority has a statutory duty to accommodate, including those that are pregnant, have dependent children, are escaping domestic abuse, children, those leaving institutional care and other areas related to physical and mental capacity (DLUHC, 2018).

Beyond such legal definitions, there are those with other experiences of personal vulnerabilities that disadvantage their access to housing. This has been defined as ‘multiple exclusion homelessness’ (England et al., Reference England, Thomas, Mackie and Browne-Gott2022; Fitzpatrick et al., Reference Fitzpatrick, Bramley and Johnsen2013; Fitzpatrick et al., Reference Fitzpatrick, Johnsen and White2011), though it should be borne in mind that the definition of homelessness in this context extends to precarious housing. Taking a broader understanding of vulnerability, this is seen to include those experiencing

In such circumstances, for housing to be sustained, it may be necessary to strategically integrate housing and support. There are many examples where this has been the case, such as the Housing First programme (Pleace, Reference Pleace2018; Bretherton and Pleace, Reference Bretherton and Pleace2015) and forms of supported accommodation where support, whilst clearly distinct from housing, is sufficiently connected to housing and integrated to the point that it can be seen as an element of housing provision for all intents and purpose. However, in the increasingly commodified housing environment, many people with such vulnerabilities will become concentrated in the low-cost private rented sector, temporary accommodation or the hyper-precarity of sofa surfing and beds in sheds. For some, HMOs and temporary accommodation may exacerbate many of their personal challenges. For others, they will find themselves in one of the growing number of ‘exempt housing’, which are fundamentally HMOs that are exempt from HMO licensing and can charge higher housing benefit by virtue of providing support to vulnerable tenants. These properties that are classified as ‘supported housing’ have become seen as increasingly problematic and providing little care for vulnerable tenants (for an example, see Raisbeck, Reference Raisbeck2018), and as Rugg (Reference Rugg2020) recognises, are de facto unregulated because local authorities ‘lacked the resources to test whether indeed that support was being delivered’. The properties are home to approximately 140 thousand people with a range of multiple and complex needs and are seen as preventing people from rough sleeping and supporting tenants to make links with service providers (Blood et al., Reference Blood, Goldup and Pleace2023). Despite some concerns regarding the nature of support and the dynamics of people with multiple and complex needs (MCN) living together, there is recognition that supported housing can potentially be a positive step in moving people from being homeless into a more structured and secure model of housing (Dobson, Reference Dobson2022; Barnes et al., Reference Barnes, Carson and Gournay2022; Rogers et al., Reference Rogers, Ahmed, Madoc-Jones, Gibbons, Jones and Wilding2020).

However, a decade of austerity and welfare reform has led to cuts in essential support services such as mental health services (Lowe and Deverteuil, Reference Lowe and DeVerteuil2020; Cummins, Reference Cummins2018; Stukler et al., Reference Stuckler, Reeves, Loopstra, Karanikolos and McKee2017), which has had a particular impact on young people that have been labelled the ‘jilted generation’ (Thomson and Katikireddi, Reference Thomson and Katikireddi2018). This is significant because it means that for some people, they may find it harder to access support, which has the potential to exacerbate their MCN. With this in mind, it is important to recognise that housing alone, whether supported or otherwise, is not a panacea for people’s MCN and that without adequate support, exacerbated problems within MCN will have an impact on people’s experiences and ability to maintain security of housing. Furthermore, it is useful to include those experiencing other forms of social and economic vulnerabilities. This includes households experiencing discrimination, new arrivals such as asylum seekers, and those experiencing various aspects of modern-day slavery who find themselves in the shadow private rented sector (Brown et al., Reference Brown, Gill and Halsall2022; Rowley et al., Reference Rowley, Morant and Katona2020; Shankley and Finney, Reference Shankley and Finney2020).