Dispersed privatization of council housing: Some structural effects in the municipal housing stock in Olsztyn, Poland

Council (public) housing privatization, as the basic instrument for transforming housing systems, has significantly affected the tenure structure and created millions of new owners across Europe. In Poland, the concept of the dispersed privatization was adopted and implemented in the long term primarily through preferential sales of council dwellings from the municipal housing stock to sitting tenants. The aim of the study was to analyze the effects of the dispersed privatization of municipal dwellings in the spatial and ownership structure of the municipal housing stock of the city of Olsztyn in Poland. The results showed that poorly controlled processes of the dispersed privatization of municipal housing caused unfavorable structural effects in the surveyed housing stock. The stock has shrunk significantly, losing buildings in better locations and conditions and the undesired fragmentation of municipal ownership and its mixing with private ownership has increased. The results and proposals are important to other cities and countries facing the challenge of slow privatization of public housing.

Race, homelessness and inner-city policy in 1980s Britain

This article utilizes an organizational history of the Birmingham-based Handsworth Single Homeless Action Group (HSHAG) to explore black youth homelessness and inner-city policy in 1980s Britain. It draws upon under-used charity archives to intervene in recent debates, considering the part played by the voluntary sector within the Thatcher administrations’ inner-city policies and what targeted funding of this kind reveals about the remaking of the welfare state in these years. First, it introduces HSHAG, setting out the context of inner-city funding programmes, before questioning how sustainable this might have been for voluntary organizations engaged in supporting the homeless population. Secondly, it examines the effects of housing privatization and unemployment on HSHAG's attempts to advise homeless black individuals and assert their rights as citizens to state support. Together, it exposes the role of the voluntary sector in welfare state restructuring and considers how this change made the task of homelessness organizations Herculean.

“They had already sold”: Uncovering relations among the local state, the market and the public in the case of municipal housing privatization, in Rosengård, Sweden

This paper uncovers the local state's complex intersections with the market and its multifaceted relations with the public through an in-depth qualitative case study of municipal housing privatization and urban renewal in one of the heartlands of the Swedish welfare state project, Rosengård in Malmö, Sweden. Drawing on the political-economic literature, I argue that housing privatization is entangled with complex interrelations among the (municipal) local state, the market, and the public and that an exploration of these relations reveals contemporary features of the local state. Hence, this investigation highlights the local state's motivation for privatization, the remaking of a market in a place where the market is believed to have failed, and the powers the local state retains. Additionally, the paper elucidates how the function of public assets changes due to privatization and considers tenants’ and residents’ worries, criticism, and concerns about municipal interventions. Subsequently, by grounding these findings in the historical function of municipalities in Sweden, the study contributes new knowledge on the local state in a deepened neoliberalized and financialized urban landscape.

Grid Governance in China under the COVID-19 Outbreak: Changing Neighborhood Governance

Housing commodification seems to suggest that a process of a state is embracing private governance. However, private governance in Chinese neighborhoods is a two-way trajectory. This paper examined two types of housing neighborhoods, namely, a work-unit housing neighborhood and gated commodity housing to understand the changes in neighborhood governance. It is interesting to observe that during the Covid-19 epidemic period, the state government enhanced its presence and public trust in neighborhood governance by changing the former ways of self-governance. As a strategy for the state to return to local governance, the grid governance is the reconfiguration of administrative resources at a neighborhood level and professionalizes neighborhood organizations to ensure the capacities of the state to solve social crises and neighborhood governance. The potential side effects of changing neighborhood governance are that while the implementation of grid governance has improved internal connections among residents, the empowered neighborhood governments acting as the “state agent on the ground” leads to an estrangement between residents and private governance. The underdevelopment of neighborhood autonomy is not only due to the restriction of state government, but more importantly, the reciprocal relationship of state-led neighborhood governance in the context of housing privatization development in China.

Housing Privatization in Transition Countries: Institutional Features and Outcomes

We provide an overview of housing privatization policies and outcomes in transition economies. Our primary aim is to collect and systematize key information concerning the institutional features of housing privatization in individual countries: we identify the initial conditions, the timeframe of housing privatization and its culmination, the extent of housing privatization, who decided about its terms and conditions, who was entitled to privatize the housing, and at what price. Furthermore, using micro-data covering all transition countries, we present new estimates of the extent of housing privatization, its dynamics during the second half of the 2000s, and the resulting housing tenure structure.