The Ideology Of Home Ownership

Demand for owner-occupied housing has expanded dramatically across modern-industrialized societies in recent years leading to volatile increases in residential property values. This book explores the rise of modern home-ownership as a cultural, socio-political and ideological phenomenon.

On the eve of the financial crisis, the USA was inhabited by almost 70 percent homeowning households, in comparison to about 45 percent in Germany. Homeownership, Renting and Society presents new evidence showing that this homeownership gap already existed between American and German cities around 1900. Existing explanations based on culture, government housing policy or typical socio-economic factors have difficulties in accounting for these long-term cross-country differences. Using historical case studies on Germany and the USA, the book identifies three institutional domains on the supply-side of the housing market – urban land, housing finance and construction – that set countries on different housing trajectories and subsequently established differences that were hard to reverse in later periods. Further chapters generalize the argument across other OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries and extend the explanation to cover historical differences in homeownership ideology and horizontal property institutions. This enlightening volume also puts forward path-dependence theories in housing studies, connects housing with vast urban-history and political-economy literature and offers comprehensive insights about the case of a tenant’s country which contradicts the tendency towards universal homeownership. Providing an all-new historic-institutionalist explanation of the German–American homeownership gap, this title will be of interest to postgraduate students and scholars interested in fields including: Housing Studies, Sociology, Urban History, Political Economy, Social Policy and Geography. It may also be of interest to those working in housing field organizations and ministries.

In Latin America, Scandinavian housing experts explained that "housing is too important a commodity to be subjected to the same general market conditions as other goods", but the Americans ridiculed such a stance. The Cold War was fought with bricks and mortar, not just small, hot wars in poor places and the threat of nuclear Armageddon. Privatisation began in Malaysia in the 1940s; in West Germany, Taiwan, Burma and South Korea in the 1950s; India in 1964; Jordan in 1965; Brazil in 1966; Guatemala and Nigeria in 1967; and the Philippines (again) in 1968. In the 1960s, the US granted loans to expand the private housing sectors in Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. They began housing projects in Rhodesia, Zambia and Mali. They moved into Senegal in 1972, Botswana in 1973, Tanzania in 1974 and Kenya in 1975 - all the while spreading the American dream.

In every major city in the world there is a housing crisis. How did this happen and what can we do about it? Everyone needs and deserves housing. But today our homes are being transformed into commodities, making the inequalities of the city ever more acute. Profit has become more important than social need. The poor are forced to pay more for worse housing. Communities are faced with the violence of displacement and gentrification. And the benefits of decent housing are only available for those who can afford it. In Defense of Housing is the definitive statement on this crisis from leading urban planner Peter Marcuse and sociologist David Madden. They look at the causes and consequences of the housing problem and detail the need for progressive alternatives. The housing crisis cannot be solved by minor policy shifts, they argue. Rather, the housing crisis has deep political and economic roots—and therefore requires a radical response.

While Americans often believe that owning a home serves as a tool for building stronger communities and crafting better citizens, this book argues that these long-standing beliefs about the public benefits of homeownership are deeply mischaracterized. As owning a home has emerged as the most important way to build wealth in the United States, it has also reshaped the way citizens become involved in their communities. Rather than engaging as public-spirited stewards of civic life, the book argues that homeowners often engage in local politics as a way to protect their property values. This civic engagement, the book argues, contributes to the politics of exclusion. It keeps particular citizens from gaining access to high-opportunity neighborhoods and reinforces patterns of residential segregation. It often marginalizes renters from participation in public life, and it equates property values with the common good. Through an analysis of the politics of homeownership, this book asks readers to reconsider the power of homeownership to strengthen citizenship and build better communities.--

Studies in housing have often concentrated on an abstract institutionalised approach isolated from the broader base of the social sciences. This book is the first to treat housing as a subject of social theory. It provides a critique of current research and theorises housing in relation to political science, social change and welfare developing a case study to illustrate these applications. By being sometimes controversial, this book will stimulate debate among housing theorists and sociologists alike. The Author is currently Senior Research fellow at the Swedish Institute for Building Research and Docent in Sociology at Uppsala University. He has written widely on Housing, Urban Studies and Sociology and his books include THE MYTH OF HOME OWNERSHIP and THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN NIGHTMARE.

The majority of people now live in cities and for many that means apartment living. Apartments are where we spend our time, make our homes, raise our families and invest our money. Apartment living requires that we try to get along with our neighbours and make decisions collectively about the management of our buildings. This book examines how different housing markets, development practices, planning regimes, legal structures and social and cultural norms affect people’s everyday experiences of apartment living.