ABSTRACT
Britain has witnessed significant social and economic changes over the last two decades, which have generated substantial inequalities in British society (Barcley 1995). Part of this growth in inequality can be traced back to restructuring in the housing and labour markets, which raises concern about insecurity in the field of housing consumption. This chapter explores how restructuring in the housing market has produced a range of new and unanticipated problems, which are indicative of growing inflexibility in the housing market. Unemployed households, for example, which are not able to command a wage high enough to raise income above that derived from welfare benefits, remain welfare dependent, while members of households may be unable to relocate to obtain employment elsewhere because of regional differences in the cost of housing. The chapter will review a range of evidence which indicates that, in addition to inflexibility in the housing market, we can now talk of the ‘insecure housing consumer’ alongside the ‘insecure worker’. The argument is pursued through an examination of restructuring in the housing and labour markets, and seeks to demonstrate how changes in each sphere have interacted and generated a series of complex problems. The chapter concludes by considering a number of possible housing policy solutions to the problems of deregulation which would help to overcome housing market inflexibility and address the needs of the increasingly insecure housing consumer.
