The 2008 financial crash continues

2020 ◽  
pp. 99-106
Author(s):  
Bob Colenutt
Keyword(s):  
Social Housing ◽  
Banking System ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
Property Market ◽  
Housing Investment ◽  
The Us ◽  
Boom And Bust ◽  
Overseas Investment ◽  
The Uk ◽  
House Building

The 2008 Crash and its continuing aftermath have had a lasting impact on the scale and persistence of the housing crisis. The chapter explains that the Crash was largely caused by over lending to residential property in the US but the contagion spread to the UK banking system. It argues that the fall out continues to affect the market in a number of ways notably credit policies housing investment and cut backs in public expenditure. The banking system and the property market were bailed out and the austerity decade has reduced the capacity and ability of local government to build social housing or compensate for the fall in private sector house building. It is argued that the UK housing market is particularly subject to boom and bust fuelled by speculation and overseas investment yet the planners were scapegoated by the Treasury for the collapse on house building after 2008.

The Property Lobby

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bob Colenutt
Keyword(s):  
House Prices ◽  
Town Planning ◽  
Planning System ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
Government Grants ◽  
Radical Reform ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Holding Back ◽  
The Impact ◽  
House Building

Book Abstract: Despite countless reports and Government policy announcements on the housing crisis over decades, the scale and depth of the crisis continues. Homelessness, shortages of social housing, rents and house prices continue rise year on year. The word affordability has become meaningless. Land landowners and housebuilders and property investors have made huge profits out of this crisis. This book focusing in examples from London and Northamptonshire examines the power of the ‘finance-housebuilding ’ complex arguing that this property lobby is the main blockage for change and reform. It explains why the housing and planning system has become increasingly dysfunctional over the last 40 years accelerating with the impact of the 2008 Crash. The book gives examples of how the property lobby has been highly effective in manipulating Government housing and planning policy for its own benefit, to the detriment of those in housing need. It shows how the housebuilders business model, backed by Government grants and subsidies, has played a central role in perpetuating the crisis. The property lobby has succeeded in diverting attention from themselves onto the town planning system which has been scapegoated for holding back new house building. The result is that the housing crisis and the power behind it is hard baked into the UK economy. It must be addressed by radical reform of the property, planning and finance system. Without these reforms homelessness, poor housing, and lack of affordability will continue indefinitely.

scholarly journals The invention of the ‘sink estate’: Consequential categorisation and the UK housing crisis

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 877-897 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Slater
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Housing ◽  
Urban Politics ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Antisocial Behaviour ◽  
Social Suffering ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
Think Tank ◽  
Family Breakdown ◽  
The Uk

This article explores the history and traces the realisation of a category that was invented by journalists, amplified by free market think tanks and converted into policy doxa (common sense) by politicians in the United Kingdom: the ‘sink estate’. This derogatory designator, signifying social housing estates that supposedly create poverty, family breakdown, worklessness, welfare dependency, antisocial behaviour and personal irresponsibility, has become the symbolic frame justifying current policies towards social housing that have resulted in considerable social suffering and intensified dislocation. The article deploys a conceptual articulation of agnotology (the intentional production of ignorance) with Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power to understand the institutional arrangements and cognitive systems structuring deeply unequal social relations. Specifically, the highly influential publications on housing by a free market think tank, Policy Exchange, are dissected in order to demonstrate how the activation of territorial stigma has become an instrument of urban politics. The ‘sink estate’, it is argued, is the semantic battering ram in the ideological assault on social housing, deflecting attention away from social housing not only as urgent necessity during a serious crisis of affordability, but as incubator of community, solidarity, shelter and home.

scholarly journals Neoliberal Nomads: Housing Insecurity and the Revival of Private Renting in the UK

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bone
Keyword(s):  
Social Housing ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Housing Tenure ◽  
Social Effects ◽  
Major Contributor ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
Private Renting ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Rented Sector

This paper offers a critical analysis, including insights from the fledgling sub-discipline of neurosociology, with the aim of challenging some of the key assumptions informing the state supported revival of the UK private rented sector (PRS) as a mainstream form of housing tenure. As is widely recognised, the PRS's expansion has occurred in tandem with the long running decline of social housing and the more recent reversal in the longstanding trend towards increasing owner occupation. This paper asserts that the policies supporting this overall trend are misconceived on a number of fronts, as the loosely regulated UK private rented sector is not only a major contributor to the country's ongoing housing crisis but carries with it a range of unacknowledged economic and social problems including profound effects on personal well-being, some fairly evident and others less so. With respect to the latter, it is argued that coming to an understanding of the negative implications of private renting in the UK under current arrangements, in addition to the more evident issues associated with poor condition and high cost accommodation, also requires an appreciation of the deeper psycho-social effects of involuntary mobility, insecurity and socio-spatial dislocation.

Financing housing investment

2020 ◽  
pp. 47-56
Author(s):  
Bob Colenutt
Keyword(s):  
Real Estate ◽  
Real Estate Investment Trusts ◽  
Housing Finance ◽  
Quantitative Easing ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
Real Estate Investment ◽  
Role Of Government ◽  
Housing Investment ◽  
The Uk

This chapter looks at the overburdening presence of property and housing finance in the UK economy. It focuses on the economic instability created by mortgage dependency. This is a critical context for understanding the role of Government in creating barriers to resolving the housing crisis though its programme of Quantitative Easing, encouragement of Real Estate Investment Trusts, and by offering tax and residence advantages for overseas investors in UK property. It also explores the rise of investor interest in Build to Rent.

The housing shortage

2020 ◽  
pp. 13-26
Author(s):  
Bob Colenutt
Keyword(s):  
Affordable Housing ◽  
Social Housing ◽  
Housing Stock ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
Housing Shortage ◽  
The Social ◽  
Private Housing ◽  
House Building ◽  
Right To Buy ◽  
The Way

This chapter explains how the housing shortage has become a numbers game played by Government. Rather than focusing on the fundamental housing crisis issues of affordability, quality and good planning, it has made the supply of private housing numbers the key objective, even though in this objective it has failed. Supported by data on declining affordability, and spiraling rents and prices, the chapter argues that the diversity and affordability of supply is nowhere near matching the diversity of need. The social housing stock has fallen sharply because of Right to Buy and Buy to Let and lack of new social house building. The concept of affordable housing has become meaningless because of the way Government has defined it.

Prospects for the Uk Economy

2009 ◽  
Vol 207 ◽  
pp. 51-70
Author(s):  
Simon Kirby ◽  
Ray Barrell ◽  
Vladimir Pillonca
Keyword(s):  
Global Economy ◽  
Banking System ◽  
Mortgage Market ◽  
Securities Markets ◽  
Access To Credit ◽  
The Past ◽  
Global Banking ◽  
The Us ◽  
Bank Of England ◽  
The Uk

Since our October forecast events have conspired to worsen the outlook for the UK and global economy. Concerns about the solvency of banks across the globe have continued, and in some cases intensified. The inter-linkages of the global economy continue to be highlighted as the list of economies slipping into recession grows, even for those who have not suffered the direct shock of a crisis in their domestic banking system. Indeed what started as a problem in securities markets related to sub-prime lending in the US mortgage market has evolved into the near collapse of the global banking system. The UK has enjoyed the fruits of the rapid growth of financial intermediation over the past decade. However, such gains are being sharply reversed, as discussed on pp. 4–8 of this Review. The problem of access to credit for households and non-financial corporations still persists and, if anything, the situation seems to have deteriorated. As discussed on pp. 71–2 of this Review, Bank of England data suggest that lending by banks to households and businesses contracted in the final quarter of last year, even though £37 billion (2.6 per cent of money GDP) of new capital was injected into two major UK banking groups, effectively nationalising one of them (Royal Bank of Scotland).

Solutions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun Spiers
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Social Housing ◽  
House Prices ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
Housing Associations ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
The Government ◽  
Policy Proposals ◽  
House Building

This chapter presents theoretical solutions and new policy proposals for the housing crisis. Local authorities should be allowed to borrow to build and the government should increase its funding for housing associations. Rural areas, in particular, need social housing that is affordable in perpetuity. Stable or gently falling house prices should also be an aim of policy. The government should consult on a range of potential changes to taxation. Moreover, local authorities in theory have the power to turn down poor-quality developments; the government and the Planning Inspectorate should encourage them to use it. Other solutions include planning for greenfield development, strategic planning, and new civic house building.

scholarly journals The public perception of prefabricated housing in the UK

10.29007/gn5j ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raj Shah ◽  
Leigh O'Mahony ◽  
Wilfred Matipa ◽  
Alison Cotgrave
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
Controlling Factors ◽  
Common Belief ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Lack Of Information ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
The Uk ◽  
House Building

The UK has been in a housing crisis for many years and it has missed its house building targets by over 1.3 million houses since 2004. Something needs to change to achieve government target. Prefabricated homes could be a solution to this issue since they could bring overall construction duration down, keep the costs lower and provide higher quality homes as they are produced in a controlled factory environment rather than on site and open to other elements. However, many controlling factors such as higher initial investment, incomplete industry supply chain and public perception have had a major impact on their limited usage up to this point. The aim of this paper is to examine the public perception regarding the prefabricated housing in the UK using a mixed research methodology with the questionnaire survey. There has been limited research in this area and the majority of research has focused on the technology involved and the sustainability impact of prefabricated housing. The survey results reveal that the UK public can struggle to accept a prefabricated house due to the lack of information regarding prefabricated housing. A common belief is that the UK government needs to support this type of housing with a financing package to encourage them to buy the prefabrication houses and builders need to inject more houses in market.

Russian Banking System under Conditions of Global Crisis

2009 ◽  
pp. 4-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Gref ◽  
K. Yudaeva
Keyword(s):  
Banking System ◽  
Commodity Prices ◽  
Financial Sector ◽  
Banking Crises ◽  
Economic Recovery ◽  
Balance Sheets ◽  
Current Economic Crisis ◽  
Risk Appetite ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Face

Problems in the financial sector were at the core of the current economic crisis. Therefore, economic recovery will only become sustainable after taking care of the major weaknesses in the financial sector. This conclusion is relevant both for the US and UK - the two countries where crisis has started, and for other economies which financial institutions turned out to be fragile in the face of the swings in the risk appetite. Russia is one of the countries where the crisis has revealed serious deficiency in the financial sector. Our study of 11 banking crises during the last 25-30 years shows that sustainable economic recovery and decrease in the dependence on commodity prices will be virtually impossible without cleaning of balance sheets and capitalization of the financial sector.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document