Where the Other Half Lives

Description

Housing has become a hot topic. The media is filled with stories of individual housing hardship and of major property-related financial crises: of crippling personal debts, rundown social housing, homelessness, mass demolition, spiralling prices, unaffordability and global recession.



This book links all of these through a radical analysis that puts housing at the heart of critical economic and political debate. The authors show that these problems arise from the fact that houses are no longer seen primarily as homes for living in, but rather as a source of profit.



Case studies from the UK, the US and other western countries are set into a overview of how housing has changed over the last few decades. The book also examines campaigns for better housing and explores possibilities for a different approach to this most fundamental of human needs.
Preface and Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I - Housing and Neoliberalism

1. If public housing didn't exist we'd have to invent it

2. Neoliberalism's Home Front

3. Regeneration as a wooden horse

Part II - Case Studies: real lives and real estate

4. From Popular Capitalism to Third Way Modernisation: the example of Leeds, England Stuart Hodkinson

5. Getting rid of the ugly bits: the myth and reality of regeneration in Dundee, Scotland - Sarah Glynn

6. The Politics Of Housing Under France's New Right - Corinne Nativel

7. Circumventing Circumscribed Neoliberalism: The 'system switch' in Swedish housing Eric Clark & Karin Johnson

8. Market Rules: Neo-liberal Housing Policy in New Zealand - Laurence Murphy

9. Going once, going twice: a short history of public housing in Australia - Peter Phibbs and Peter Young

10. Destroyed by HOPE: Public housing, neoliberalism, and progressive housing activism in the US - Jason Hackworth

11. Political marginalization, misguided nationalism and the destruction of Canada's social housing systems - Jason Hackworth

Part III - The Way Forward: strategy and tactics

12. Fighting Back: lessons from 100 years of housing campaigns

13. Homes for Today and Tomorrow

About the authors

Index

Sujets

• Real Estate
• Employabilité, métiers et formations
• Welfare economics
• General officer
• Economics
• Business
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 mai 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783715497
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Where the Other Half Lives
Where the Other Half Lives
Lower Income Housing in a Neoliberal World
Edited by
SARAH GLYNN
First published 2009 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Sarah Glynn 2009
The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 2858 4 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 2857 7 Paperback ISBN 978 1 7837 1549 7 ePub ISBN 978 1 7837 1550 3 Mobi
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. The paper may contain up to 70 per cent post-consumer waste.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Sidmouth, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
CONTENTS List of Figures Preface and Acknowledgements
  Introduction Sarah Glynn
 
PART I     BACKGROUND: WHEN ‘THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SOCIETY’
     1.
  If Public Housing Didn’t Exist, We’d Have to Invent It Sarah Glynn    2. Neoliberalism’s Home Front Sarah Glynn    3. Regeneration as a Trojan Horse Sarah Glynn
 
PART II     CASE STUDIES: REAL LIVES AND REAL ESTATE
     4.
  From Popular Capitalism to Third-Way Modernisation: The Example of Leeds, England Stuart Hodkinson    5. Getting Rid of the Ugly Bits: The Myth and Reality of Regeneration in Dundee, Scotland Sarah Glynn    6. The Politics of Housing Under France’s New Right Corinne Nativel    7. Circumventing Circumscribed Neoliberalism: The ‘System Switch’ in Swedish Housing Eric Clark and Karin Johnson    8. Market Rules: Neoliberal Housing Policy in New Zealand Laurence Murphy    9. Going Once, Going Twice: A Short History of Public Housing in Australia Peter Phibbs and Peter Young 10. Destroyed by HOPE: Public Housing, Neoliberalism and Progressive Housing Activism in the US Jason Hackworth 11. Political Marginalisation, Misguided Nationalism and the Destruction of Canada’s Social Housing Systems Jason Hackworth
 
PART III     THE WAY FORWARD: STRATEGY AND TACTICS
  12.
  Fighting Back: Lessons from 100 Years of Housing Campaigns Sarah Glynn 13. Homes for Today and Tomorrow Sarah Glynn
  About the Authors Index
LIST OF FIGURES I.1 ‘For Sale – Investment Opportunity’. This and other drawings in this book were done by me for use in various housing campaigns – Sarah Glynn. 1.1 The Logie Estate, Dundee, the first state-funded council housing in Scotland. 2.1 ‘Consulting with stakeholders’. 3.1 Housing campaign illustration. 3.2 Housing campaign illustration. 4.1 Campaigners take over the window of Little London’s disused betting shop. 4.2 A tenant opposed to the PFI scheme hangs a banner from his threatened tower block flat. 5.1 A view from the Derby Street multis – showing small local shops in the foreground, two of the four Alexander Street multis and the River Tay beyond. 5.2 A much-loved flat in the Derby Street multis. 5.3 October 2008: The remaining tenants in Menzieshill are surrounded by cold, boarded-up flats, while the empty corridors attract vandalism. 6.1 Josseline Bruneau, the last of some hundred protesters, makes a final stand to save her flat in Bourges, January 2008. 6.2 Tents along the Canal Saint-Martin, December 2006. 6.3 Logo of the Ministère de la Crise du Logement. 7.1 Youth theatre and housing in the Stockholm suburb of Tensta. 7.2 Tensta, January 2006: Million Programme housing included homes for low-cost ownership, such as these, and similar flats for rent – all built to keep out the cold of the Swedish winter. 8.1 Post-war state housing. 8.2 More recent state housing. 9.1 Private rented housing in Brisbane. 9.2 New social rented housing in Brisbane (not all Australian social rented housing is of this quality). 10.1 Public housing in New York’s Lower East Side. 11.1 Regent Park, Toronto – Canada’s oldest and largest social housing project, begun in 1947. This picture was taken in 2004, before the start of the current redevelopment. 11.2 2004: OCAP on the march. 11.3 2003: OCAP at a protest squat. 12.1 January 2008: At the Defend Council Housing lobby of Parliament. The ‘Fourth Option’ demanded on the placards (an option that is never offered) is direct investment in council housing on the same terms given to housing associations. 12.2 December 2005: Mass lockout at Lincoln Place – a line of sheriffs’ cars, and groups of protesting tenants. 12.3 Elizabeth Pascoe in her threatened home in Liverpool. 12.4 Carol outside her home in ‘Bloomin’ Cairns Street, July 2008.
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Our title harks back over a hundred years to a book that helped draw attention to the miserable housing conditions of 1890s New York. Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives 1 was very much a book of its time, and while I hope that this volume may also help shine a light on more neglected areas of housing and society, it does not share Riis’s safe, market-based conclusions. 2 In fact, its core message is a repudiation of the revival of a form of political economy that sees everything through the lens of business interests and is bringing about a return to historic levels of inequality.
The idea of putting together an edited collection of studies examining the impact of neoliberalism in different countries germinated in a double session I co-organised, with Michael Punch, at the Institute of British Geographers Conference in the summer of 2006. We called our sessions ‘Housing in Crisis’. Today, this phrase screams out of every newspaper, but discussion, like policy, tends to focus on those who are better off, and their ability to get on (or not fall off) the housing ladder. If mention is made of what William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, called the ‘submerged tenth’ 3 of the population, this is generally rather vague, and often takes the form of regarding them as a problem, external to the rest of society. The purpose of this book is to begin to restore the analytical balance and turn the spotlight on those who have suffered most from the flip side of neoliberal economics, and who, if not quite another half, certainly make up more than a tenth of modern western society.
My own journey into housing studies owes its origin to an accident of circumstances. In 2004, Dundee’s public housing was threatened, first with proposed privatisation, and then, immediately afterwards, with a large-scale programme of demolition: I became involved with tenants, helping to uncover what was happening and campaign against the imposition of decisions that most of those effected did not want. When, in 2005, I was appointed to a lectureship at Edinburgh University, I had the opportunity to investigate more fully the network of forces – local, national and international – that were impacting on what I could see happening around me. I was able to use the understanding I was gaining from my academic research to help dissect what was going on in Dundee, and I was able to use the insights gained from working alongside local tenants to help throw light on more theoretical understandings and dissect the official policy discourses. So my first thanks must go to all my friends in the tenants’ movement and other housing campaigns – in the Scottish Tenants’ Organisation, Glasgow Save Our Homes, Edinburgh Against Stock Transfer, and here in Dundee – and also down in Liverpool. Thank you for all you have taught me. And thank you to Edinburgh University for enabling me to develop my understanding.
I would like to thank all the contributors who have enabled this project to have the truly international dimension appropriate to a discussion of international economic and social forces. Thank you for contributing your work and ideas, and for your faith in this project. Thank you, too, to all those who took the photographs that make it possible for readers to visualise some of the places and people discussed. (Every effort has been made to contact the photographers to ask for permission to use their work, though in one case we have had no response. Copyright for all photographs remains with the photographer.)
I am, as always, grateful to all those who have read and commented on various parts of the text – to Peter Ambrose, Tom Slater, Simon Glynn, and especially my parents, Ian and Jenifer Glynn. Thank you for your suggestions and encouragement. And thank you to my copy-editor, Jeanne Brady, and to David Castle at Pluto Press for their help, patience and good humour, which have allowed me to survive the inevitable crises and frustrations of pulling together a project of this kind. Finally, I want to thank Tony Cox, who takes most of the credit (or blame) for getting me involved in housing activism, and who, through years of discussion, has helped me develop the understandings and ideas expounded in this book.
Postscript
Housing has rarely been so politically important, but it is a difficult time to write about it as events are changing so quickly. As we were going to press, Leeds City Council announced that the global financial meltdown had necessitated the removal of all private residential development from the regeneration scheme described in Chapter 4 , and that they will only be building public housing. Such events, and the confusion that surrounds them, only emphasise the necessity of analys