The Ideology of Home Ownership: Homeowner Societies and the Role of Housing

293 Pages·2008·4.215 MB·English

by  Richard Ronald (auth.)

The Ideology of Home Ownership
The Ideology of
Home Ownership
Homeowner Societies and the
Role of Housing
Richard Ronald
OTB Research Institute
Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
© Richard Ronald 2008
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2008 978-1-4039-8945-1
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Contents
List of Figures vii
List of Tables viii
Preface ix
1 Housing and the Rise of Home Ownership 1
2 Unravelling Home Ownership Ideology 16
Introduction 16
Theorizing housing and society 17
Home ownership and ideology 24
Social structure, discourse and ideology 36
Conclusions 46
3 Homeowner Ideologies 48
Introduction 48
Housing discourses and ideologies 49
Privatism and individualism 62
Consumption and individualization 67
Normalization and subjugation 74
Conclusion 81
4 Housing, Globalization and Welfare States 83
Introduction 83
Housing systems and welfare regimes 84
Competitive states and asset-based welfare 95
Home ownership and the neo-liberalization
of welfare 108
Conclusion 115
5 Anglo-Saxon Homeowner Societies 118
Introduction 118
A British nation of homeowners 119
An American home ownership dream 138
The Great Australian Dream 152
Conclusion 161
v
vi Contents
6 East Asian Homeowner Societies 163
Introduction 163
A Japanese nation of homeowners 168
Home ownership in Hong Kong 180
‘Public’ owner-occupied housing in Singapore 191
Conclusion 203
7 Comparing Homeowner Societies 206
Introduction 206
Convergence and divergence in the
Anglo-Saxon model 207
Identifying convergence in the
East Asian model 219
Comparing home ownership regimes 232
8 The Future of Home Ownership and the
Consequences of Tenure 239
Bibliography 255
Index 277
List of Figures
1.1 International house-price increases 1997–2005 3
1.2 Mortgage debts to GDP ratios 4
5.1 UK home ownership rates 1914–2005 123
5.2 UK nominal house-price increases measured
as an index, 1993 5 100 129
5.3 Tenure trends of young households in the UK 134
5.4 US home ownership rates 1910–2006 143
5.5 Australia home ownership rates 1911–2001 156
6.1 N ominal housing prices of homes with GHLC
loans within a 70km radius of central Tokyo
1987–2003 176
6.2 T enure rates for permanent residential housing
in Hong Kong 183
6.3 H ome ownership rate of houses by
dwelling type in Singapore 191
vii
List of Tables
5.1 Home ownership rates by race in the
United States 144
6.1 Housing tenure in Japan 171
6.2 Singapore housing indicators 196
7.1 Key aspects of Anglo-Saxon home ownership
systems 212
7.2 Key aspects of East Asian home ownership systems 220
7.3 Divergent features of East Asian and
Anglo-Saxon home ownership models 234
viii
Preface
This book considers the phenomenal growth of owner-occupied housing
tenure across societies in recent decades, asking why and how has home
ownership become so significant in so many different contexts? A cen-
tral concept in my approach is ‘home ownership ideology’, which
implies that tenure practices are not benign but support a particular
alignment or interaction of social and power relations. A c omplementary
concept is that of ‘homeowner society’, which suggests that social rela-
tions in some societies are specifically orientated towards the tenure
and that owner-occupied housing systems play a special role in the
development pathways of some countries. The purpose of looking at
home ownership and society in this way is to develop understanding of
the role of housing systems and housing cultures in emerging social
structures. Although there has been a growing obsession with home
ownership following its growth across societies in terms of tenure rates,
and the global augmentation of home-property values, there has not
been a parallel awareness of its wider social impact.
The academic material in the book is drawn from theoretical and
empirical data from various disciplines which intersect in a field that
can be loosely described as ‘housing studies’. Research in this area has
generally considered the structure of housing systems, differences
between societies, and shifts in policy and practice in terms of the most
tangible of variables such as tax concessions and tenure subsidies. This
book takes a broader view. It considers the construction or constitution
of home ownership orientated tenure systems in terms of policy prac-
tices, housing discourses and socio-political contexts. The aim is to
identify similarities in tenure processes between advanced societies in
order to illustrate the augmented impact housing is having on individ-
ual households as well as the structure of social systems. I also seek to
identify differences in the role of home ownership in different countries
in order to demonstrate its salience as a dimension of society.
I address a number of societies that have been associated with t raditions
and strong preferences for owner-occupied housing. This primarily
includes a group of Anglo-Saxon societies including Britain, Australia
and the United States. I also consider more unfamiliar cases of home-
owner society in the literature including Singapore, Hong Kong and
Japan. These countries do not have the highest rates of owner-occupation
ix
x Preface
in the industrialized world as many South and East European societies,
for example, have home ownership rates well above 80 per cent. I argue
however, that there are discernable patterns among groups of homeowner
society that underlie regimes of ideological relations.
Like many books, since the time of conception to the time of publica-
tion, considerable changes have unfolded in both the research field as
well as in the material reality of housing markets and socio-economic
situations. This book was put together following a decade of rapid house
price inflation in most Western societies. This stimulated considerable
social and economic restructuring in terms of national economies and
the risks and debts taken on by individual house-purchasers. Over the
same period, housing systems and markets in the ‘Tiger’ economies of
East Asia were fundamentally destabilized by global economic fluctua-
tions, and have only begun to recover very recently.
The actual writing of the book was done in three very different con-
texts. Initial studies were carried out in Nottingham, England and there
is an unavoidable slant throughout the text towards examples from the
United Kingdom. The second national context was Japan where I c arried
out comparative research on East Asian homeowner societies at Kobe
University. The final stages of completion have been accomplished at
the OTB research Institute for Housing, Urban and Mobility Studies, at
Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. These three societies
contrast starkly in terms of housing systems and cultures of housing
consumption and provide good examples for considering the context
and objectives of the book.
In Britain house-prices have boomed in the last decade. Consequently,
the majority of homeowners, with little real effort, appeared to make
considerable capital gains. This consolidated the status of the tenure
socially and, furthermore, created a general sense of smugness among
owner-occupiers that they were property investment experts. Whether
house price levels are sustainable or not is yet to be seen. A likely long-
term implication of house price inflation is that those who were still
moving up the housing-ladder when the market kicked off, while cur-
rently euphoric from the gains made on their existing small home, may
end up paying two or three times more for housing during their lifetimes.
A more fundamental implication is that many households, especially
younger ones, are now effectively excluded from their preferred tenure.
In Japan, the 1980s housing-market was at the heart of the economic
bubble which proved to be one of the greatest examples of u nsustainable
over-speculation in history. During the 1990s most house values dropped
by almost half and there has only recently been notable recovery, and