Geographers have started studying residential (housing) and commercial real estate (offices, retail, leisure) at the intersection of financial and urban geographies to understand how the built ...environment – chunky and spatially fixed – has been turned into a (quasi-)financial asset – ‘unitized’ and liquid – through a range of regulatory and socio-technical changes and constructions. The financialization of real estate is not limited to the rise in household debt, mortgage securitization and international investment in office markets, but increasingly also affects rental housing: private equity, hedge funds and REITs buy up large portfolios of social and private rented housing, while housing associations use derivatives and other financial instruments. This report surveys the most recent research on finance, real estate and housing.
The Beveridge Report listed ‘Squalor’ as one of the ‘five giants on the road to reconstruction’, with the use of the term pointing to a broader concern than individual houses ‘unfit for human ...habitation’. ‘Squalor’, said Beveridge, ‘arises mainly through haphazard distribution of industry and population’ indicated anxiety about pollution and the ‘mean’, dark streets in cities and industrial towns. Apart from these references, the Beveridge Report made no other mentions of ‘Squalor’ but in later publications, Beveridge advocated New Towns and the involvement of voluntary housing associations in housing supply as remedies to the problem. This article reviews the context and history of Beveridge's Giant of Squalor, considering how Beveridge dealt with the ‘problem of rent’ the attempts by governments to tackle the issue, examines the contributions made by New Towns and housing associations, records progress in improving minimum housing standards and investigates potential policies to overcome these challenges that might be included in a ‘New Beveridge’ Report.
Social housing in Flanders is provided by two types of organizations. Social Housing Associations (SHAs) build and buy houses. Social Rental Agencies (SRAs) rent houses on the private market. Both ...types of organizations have a similar goal: to provide affordable and good quality housing to households in need. In this article, we describe the SHA and SRA model, assess the cost for the government of both models and evaluate their cost-effectiveness, which we define as the value for society (the outcome) given the government budget. The conclusion is that an SRA dwelling in Flanders on average has a higher cost to the government than an SHA dwelling. With respect to outcomes, we find some are better for SHAs and other are better for SRAs. The main contribution of this article is that it proposes a methodology for assessing the cost and the cost-effectiveness of different models of social housing, which can also be applied in other institutional contexts.
In urban regeneration projects, balancing environmental, social, and economic aspects is crucial but challenging, often leading to mission drift when team focus deviates from the original goals. ...Through a case study of regeneration projects at a large U.K. housing association, we explore decision makers’ attention to sustainability, health, and well-being as core elements of social mission. We combined qualitative analysis with an examination of structural complexities and system behaviors, adopting a systems thinking perspective. Analysis of attention patterns in regeneration meetings reveals that attention to the social missions was not sustained, with evident attention shifts toward financial costs and risks. Also, sustainability is prioritized less than health and well-being topics. We use a causal loop diagram to describe the underlying mechanisms that drive attention dynamics, highlighting how the structural complexities can undermine sustainable development in regeneration. Finally, we propose strategies to sustain attention toward sustainability, health, and well-being in regeneration.
•A pre and post renovation energy use analysis of almost 90,000 renovated dwellings.•The (p)rebound effects explain only partly disappointing energy renovation results.•Effectiveness of renovations ...are dependent on state of building prior to renovation.•Effectiveness of renovations are dependent on type of occupant.•Deep renovations often save less energy than expected but are the most effective.
Energy renovations often result in lower energy savings than expected. Therefore, in this study we investigate nearly 90,000 renovated dwellings in the Netherlands with pre and post renovation data of actual and calculated energy consumption. One of the main additions of this paper, compared to previous studies on thermal renovation, is that it only takes dwellings into account with the same occupants before and after renovation, using a large longitudinal dataset. Overall this paper shows new insights towards the influence of the energy efficiency state of a building prior to energy renovation, the type of building, the number of occupants, the income level of the occupants and the occupancy time on the actual energy savings, the energy saving gap and on the probability of lower energy savings than expected. We also investigate if the influence is different per type of thermal renovation measure. Some of the findings are: it is impossible to conclude which single thermal renovation measure is the most effective because this is dependent on the energy efficiency of the building prior to the energy renovation, type of building, income level and occupancy; occupants with a high income save more energy than occupants with low income; dwellings with employed occupants benefit more from improved building installations than dwellings occupied by unemployed occupants; The prebound and rebound effects are only part of the explanations for lower than expected energy savings; Deep renovations result more often in lower than expected energy savings than single renovation measures but nevertheless they result in the highest average energy saving compared to other thermal renovation measures. The results could be used for more realistic expectations of the energy reduction achieved by thermal renovations, which is important for (amongst others) policy makers, clients and contractors who make use of energy performance contracting, home owners, landlords and (social) housing associations and as a starting point to improve the energy calculation method.
The social participation and integration of older adults are important aspects of healthy aging. However, in general, older adults have smaller social networks than their younger counterparts due to ...changes in their life cycle stage, such as retirement or age-related losses, along with a declining health and increasing mobility limitations. Consequently, with increasing age, an increasing proportion of older people experience feelings of loneliness and social isolation. Previous studies that have analyzed the relationships between loneliness, social networks, and the living environment have often been based on bivariate relationships or included only a limited number of variables. Therefore, the aim of this study was to analyze multiple relationships in a more comprehensive framework. Data were collected using a survey among 182 adults aged 65 years and over in the Netherlands. A Bayesian belief network (BBN) modeling approach was used that derives all direct and indirect relationships between the variables. The results showed that feelings of loneliness are directly related to satisfaction with one's social network and neighborhood attachment and are indirectly related to perceived safety and satisfaction with local amenities and services. This knowledge is relevant to urban planners and policy makers who focus on creating livable and healthy social neighborhoods for the aging population.
Flanders has a relatively small but well targeted social housing stock. Social housing policy has been fairly stable since the devolvement of housing policy from the Belgian state to the regions in ...the 1980s. As such, Flanders did not follow the trends that were observed internationally in social housing finance and provision, e.g. towards privatization and replacing object subsidies by subject subsidies. However, things may change. Today, Flemish social housing is facing one of the most important reforms in its history. In 2023, the Social Housing Associations (SHAs) and Social Rental Agencies (SRAs) have to merge into ‘Housing Companies’. The reform includes a radical redistribution of the working areas of the social housing providers, and will be accompanied by a reform of the allocation rules. In addition, a new finance mechanism is implemented aiming to subsidise private developers for building social and affordable housing. In this policy review, we describe these policy changes within the historical and international context, and discuss the reactions from stakeholders and researchers. We conclude that the policy changes will probably not alter the conclusion about the somewhat exceptional evolution of Flemish social housing within the international context, but need to be followed with care, as the access of social housing for vulnerable groups may become more difficult, could lead to a further slowdown of social housing investments and to a less cost-effective allocation of subsidies.
Village Housing explores the housing challenge faced by England’s amenity villages, rooted in post-war counter-urbanisation and a rising tide of investment demand for rural homes. It tracks solutions ...to date and considers what further actions might be taken to increase the equity of housing outcomes and thereby support rural economies and alternate rural futures. Examining past, current and future intervention, the book’s authors look firstly at the interwar reliance on landowners to provide tied housing and post-war diversification of responses to rising housing access difficulties, including from the public and third sectors; secondly, at recent responses that are community-led or rely on flexibilities in the planning system; and thirdly, at actions that disrupt established production processes: self-build, low impact development and a re-emergence of council provision. These responses to the village housing challenge are set against a broader backcloth of structural constraint – rooted in a planning-land-tax-finance nexus – and opportunities, through reform, to reduce that constraint. Village Housing makes the case for planning, land and tax reforms that can broader the social inclusivity and diversity of villages, supporting their economic function and allowing them to play their part in post-carbon rural futures. It aims to contribute greater understanding of the village housing problem – framed by the wider cost crisis afflicting advanced economies – and offer glimpses of alternative relationships with planning and land.
The aim of this research is to explore how social housing associations can introduce circular strategies and integrate social elements, next to ecological elements, within these strategies. In order ...to investigate this aim, this paper first explores the circular strategy options that can be adopted by housing associations. Thereafter, the paper explores how social elements can be integrated within these strategies via the establishment of relationships with communities in the network of housing associations. By performing an in-depth case study, we identified potential circular strategies for housing associations and indicate how community relationships could be established within these strategies. The findings highlight that community relationships in the vision formulation and activities involved in the execution of circular strategies may assist in creating synergies between the ecological aims of circular strategies and the perspectives and needs of communities. On the other hand, the results indicate that not establishing relationships with communities or only establishing relationships in the strategy outcomes may be detrimental to both community needs and the ecological aims of circular strategies.
•Circular strategies need to integrate both social and ecological elements.•The identified circular strategy options only limitedly included social elements.•Social elements could be integrated through relationships with communities.•The type of community relationships effected the integration of social elements.•The main challenge was to find synergies between social and ecological elements.
Austerity and welfare reforms - such as Universal Credit (UC) - are changing the ways in which care is delivered in the UK, increasing the precarity of individuals and the organisations who care for ...them. New cultures of care are emerging as a result. We show how an emplaced affect of 'edgy-ness' shaped a culture of care within third-sector organisations and housing associations working in Cornwall, UK. Drawing on a collaborative project consisting of four housing associations and four VCSOs, we explore 'edgy-ness' as one specific affect of precarity through an analysis of practitioners' narratives of the project and its success.
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