Housing Market Renewal and Social Class Formation (Housing, Planning and Design)

248 Pages·2008·1.1 MB·English

by  Chris Allen

Housing Market Renewal and Social Class
Housing market renewal is one of the most controversial urban policy pro-
grammes of recent years. Housing Market Renewal and Social Class critically
examines the rationale for housing market renewal: to develop ‘high-value’
housing markets in place of the so-called ‘failing markets’ of low-cost housing.
Whose interests are served by such a programme and who loses out?
Drawing on empirical evidence from Liverpool, the author argues that
housing market renewal plays to the interests of the housing industry and
the middle classes in viewing the market for houses as a field of social and
economic ‘opportunities’, in stark contrast to a working class who are more
concerned with the practicalities of ‘dwelling’. Against this background of these
differing attitudes to the housing market, Housing Market Renewal and Social
Class explores the difficult question of whether institutions are now using the
housing market renewal programme to make profits at the expense of ordinary
working-class people. Reflecting on how this situation has come about, the
book critically examines the purpose of current housing market renewal policies,
and suggests directions for interested social scientists wishing to understand the
implications of the programme.
Housing Market Renewal and Social Class provides a unique phenomeno-
logical understanding of the relationship between social class and the market
for houses, and will be compelling reading for anybody concerned with the
situation of working-class people living in UK cities.
Chris Allen is Professor of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University,
UK.
Housing, Planning and Design Series
Editors: Nick Gallent and Mark Tewdwr-Jones,
UCL Bartlett School of Planning
This series of books explores the interface between housing policy and practice,
and spatial planning, including the role of planning in supporting housing policies
in the countryside, the pivotal role that planning plays in raising housing supply,
affordability and quality, and the link between planning/housing policies and
broader areas of concern including homelessness, the use of private dwellings,
regeneration, market renewal and environmental impact. The series positions
housing and planning debates within the broader built environment agenda,
engaging in a critical analysis of different issues at a time when many planning
systems are being modernised and prepared for the challenges facing twenty-
first century society.
Housing Market Renewal and Private Dwelling
Social Class Contemplating the use of housing
Chris Allen Peter King
Decent Homes for All Housing Development
Nick Gallent and Mark Andrew Golland and Ron Blake
Tewdwr-Jones
Planning and Housing in the
Forthcoming:
Rapidly Urbanising World
Paul Jenkins, Harry Smith and Ya
Rural Housing Policy
Ping Wang
Tim Brown and Nicola Yates
International Perspectives on
Including Neighbourhoods in
Rural Homelessness
Europe
Edited by Paul Cloke and Paul
Edited by Nicky Morrison, Judith
Milbourne
Allen and Arild Holt-Jensen
Housing in the European
Sustainability in New Housing
Countryside
Development
Rural pressure and policy in
Alina Congreve
Western Europe
Edited by Nick Gallent, Mark
Shucksmith and Mark Tewdwr-Jones
Housing Market Renewal
and Social Class
Chris Allen
First published 2008
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2008 Chris Allen
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or repro-
duced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopy-
ing and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with
regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and
cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any efforts or
omissions that may be made.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Allen, Chris, 1969–
Housing market renewal and social class/Chris Allen.
p. cm. – (Housing, planning and design series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-415-41560-6 (hardback: alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-415-41561-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-203-93274-2 (ebook)
1. Home ownership – Social aspects. 2. Social classes. I. Title.
HD7287.8.A44 2008
363.5’83–dc22
2007028590
ISBN 0-203-93274-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-41560-8 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-415-41561-6 (pbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-93274-9 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-41560-6 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-41561-3 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-93274-2 (ebk)
For Kate, Fraser and Charlie
In memory of my grandparents: Arthur and Mary
Kenny and William and Hilda Allen, who were all
from Liverpool
Criticism consists in uncovering [hegemonic] thought and trying to change it:
showing that things are not as obvious as people believe, making it so that what
is taken for granted is no longer taken for granted. To do criticism is to make
harder those acts which are now too easy. Understood in these terms, criticism
(and radical criticism) is utterly indispensable for any transformation . . . . To say
to oneself from the start ‘What is the reform that I will be able to make?’ – That’s
not a goal for the intellectual to pursue, I think. His role, since he works precisely
in the sphere of thought, is to see how far the liberation of thought can go toward
making these transformations urgent enough for people to want to carry them out,
and sufficiently difficult to carry out for them to be deeply inscribed into reality. It
is a matter of making conflicts more visible, of making them more essential than
mere clashes of interest or mere institutional blockages.
(Foucault 1994: 456–7)
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
PART I
Invitation to class analysis 13
1 The death and resurrection of class in sociology 15
2 Theorising social class 28
PART II
Social class and the market for houses 55
3 Social class and the question of ‘being’ 57
4 Being in the market for houses 72
5 Being in a ‘depressed’ market for houses 103
PART III
The class politics of housing market renewal 119
6 Housing market renewal and the ‘new’ market logic
of urban renewal 121
7 Working-class experiences of the brave new housing
market 157
8 Housing market renewal and the politics of
middle-class domination 175
viii Contents
9 The rich get richer: profiteering from working-class
suffering 195
Appendix I 203
Appendix II 204
Notes 213
Bibliography 219
Index 229
Acknowledgements
My motivation to write this book was provided by people who live in the hous-
ing market renewal (HMR) area of Liverpool, who are currently involved in a
struggle to overturn the compulsory purchase orders that have been issued on
their homes. Their decency, honesty, friendliness and sense of humanity during
my time there was heartwarming, as was their attachment to a place that urban
elites wrote off a long time ago. I felt compelled to write this critical account of
HMR because people like this deserve to have their side of the story told. They
have so far been deprived of the ability to tell their side by urban elites who have
denied them access to legal aid and therefore to legal representation at public
enquiries into the compulsory purchase of their homes. They have also been
denied the opportunity to tell their side of the housing market renewal story
by social researchers who have, at worst, ignored them and, at best, arrogantly
and patronisingly dismissed resident opposition to housing market renewal as
a minority of lone voices. Although these residents deserve so much better,
power is ruthless in the way it denies those who deserve more. I hope the
residents of the HMR area in Liverpool, as well as residents that I have met in
HMR areas elsewhere in the North West, feel that this book counterbalances a
literature that, at present, is critically vacuous.
Writing this book was a paradoxical experience. On the one hand, writing
the book was emotionally difficult because it was written at a time when I was
exposed to the brute injustices of housing market renewal through involvement
in public enquiries to oppose compulsory purchase orders. On the other hand,
this sense of injustice provided me with the drive and desire to write, which
made the actual process of clarifying my ideas and typing text into the computer
a relatively easy task. That said, I am grateful to Kate, Fraser and Charlie for
making me laugh and smile so much in everyday life. Their love and humour
provides the necessary counterbalance to the more serious aspects of life, such
as writing about the injuries and injustices suffered by the people described in
this book. I am especially grateful to my partner, Kate, who has always encour-
aged and supported me in projects such as this. She understood the importance
of this book even if she doesn’t always agree with my views.