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Housing market financialization, neoliberalism and everyday retrenchment of social housing

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  • Michael Byrne
  • Michelle Norris

Abstract

Social housing policy in Ireland has evolved over several decades into a significantly marketized tenure which relies on, supports and expands the private housing market. In this paper we argue that it does so in ways that contribute to the financialization of housing by embedding housing in volatile financial market cycles. Although the majority of the literature on financialization, both in Ireland and internationally, has tended to focus on home ownership and mortgage markets, we argue that the retrenchment of social housing and the shift towards subsidized private rental accommodation have been key features of the process of financialization and of Ireland’s experience of boom and bust. The neoliberal turn in social housing policy, however, did not take shape in the form of either a coherent ideological project or a coherent suite of policy measures, but rather through the kind of piecemeal, ad hoc and typically ‘pragmatic’ processes identified by Kitchin et al. It is by examining the unfolding of these ad hoc processes that we identify both the neoliberalization of social housing policy and the interfaces between this process and that of financialization, particularly by highlighting how the former has enabled and facilitated the latter.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Byrne & Michelle Norris, 2022. "Housing market financialization, neoliberalism and everyday retrenchment of social housing," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 54(1), pages 182-198, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:54:y:2022:i:1:p:182-198
    DOI: 10.1177/0308518X19832614
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Michelle Norris & Menelaos Gkartzios & Dermot Coates, 2014. "Property-led Urban, Town and Rural Regeneration in Ireland: Positive and Perverse Outcomes in Different Spatial and Socio-economic Contexts," Open Access publications 10197/4952, Research Repository, University College Dublin.
    2. Michelle Norris & Dermot Coates, 2010. "Private sector provision of social housing: an assessment of recent Irish experiments," Public Money & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(1), pages 19-26, January.
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    7. Blyth, Mark, 2013. "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199828302.
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    14. Michelle Norris & Dermot Coates, 2010. "Private sector provision of social housing: an assessment of recent Irish experiments," Open Access publications 10197/5169, Research Repository, University College Dublin.
    15. Michelle Norris & Menelaos Gkartzios & Dermot Coates, 2014. "Property-Led Urban, Town and Rural Regeneration in Ireland: Positive and Perverse Outcomes in Different Spatial and Socio-Economic Contexts," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(9), pages 1841-1861, September.
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