ABSTRACT
Central to this paper is the argument that housing debates must actively engage with emerging tensions in the management of welfare (Mann, 2005). Recent analysis points to an observed shift toward a ‘post-welfare’ society in which the home-as-investment is replacing by stealth the former protection of more generous and universal state provision of insurance and benefits, as a common asset to draw down periodically over the life-course (Jarvis, 2007; Tomlinson, 2001). On the one hand mortgage deregulation extends the market for first-time buyers, just as flexible mortgage lending makes it possible for existing homeowners to view their home as a form of cash dispenser, to boost consumer spending (Klyuev ampentity Mills, 2006). On the other hand, alongside a ‘rolling back’ of state services and belief that private markets deliver basic needs and wants more efficiently than the state, homeowners are being asked to think of their home as a source of ‘pension plan’ and source of welfare provision, as a store of assets from which to fund the care of elderly relatives, sponsor adult offspring through higher education, pay for specialist medical treatment and pay for their own personal care in old age. The asset of the home is clearly not infinitely elastic. Moreover, home consumption assets (the sub-letting of rooms or use of a spare room to accommodate live-in help) intersect in complex ways with financial assets of the home (equity withdrawn to spend on home improvements or pay for family care). In this context, the ambitious plans of British and US governments to further extend homeownership to disadvantaged groups can be cynically viewed as part of a damaging privatisation of survival, rather than efforts to combat social exclusion.
