Determinación de la causa

6.1 Introduction

Chapter five explored the different challenges faced by housing staff responsible for the development, sale and on-going management of shared ownership in London and Cumbria. Challenges which stem from the betwixt and between nature of shared ownership as a tenure that straddles the renting/ownership divide. The practical issues faced in trying to meet a set of locally defined housing needs, with a product that is so closely tied to the private market were illuminated. As well as the problems that emerged in the on-going management of a shared ownership, a tenure that is shaped by a different set of legal rights and obligations compared to social rented or conventional owner occupied dwellings. The chapter also touched upon the divergent views amongst housing staff regarding how the tenure should be managed. Views that were influenced in part by differing perceptions of shared ownership households as homeowners and tenants. The purpose of this chapter is to open up this final point further, with a focus on the second research question identified for this study:

How do shared ownership households and others perceive and rework normative views of housing tenure?

Within the literature to date on shared ownership the focus has tended to be on the more tangible benefits and costs of the tenure including issues of affordability and access, as well as quantitative analysis looking at the geographical spread and types of households entering the sector (Bramley and Dunmore, 1996; Burgess, 2010;

Cho and Whitehead, 2010; Elsinga, 2005). The scholarship addressing the less tangible aspects of ‘home’ in relation to shared ownership, including its role in creating personal identity and defining social status, is less well developed (Bright and Hopkins, 2011; McKee, 2011; Wallace, 2012).¹ As Wallace (2012) argues, there is a need for the research community to explore these aspects further, not least

1 Following Blunt and Dowling (2006) ‘home’ is understood as both a ‘site in which we live’ and an

‘imaginary that is imbued with feelings’ (p3). As Massey (1994) argues, dwellings like other places are not static, fixed or bounded but rather ‘open and provisional’ (p168). Homes are understood to be complex and multilayered, and the personal relations that constitute them are seen to ‘extend beyond those of the household’ (Blunt and Dowling, 2006: 3).

because in the UK housing tenure has become an important social delineator, is used as a shorthand for an assumed set of benefits and disadvantages, as well as the social and economic characteristics of households (Flint and Rowlands, 2003;

Ronald, 2008). Owner occupation has a high status, is associated with autonomy, choice and freedom, active citizenship, family life, investment and the ‘ideal home’

(Ronald, 2008). Private renting is associated with insecurity, transience, a lack of control and poor value for money (Gurney, 1999b). Social renting has a low status, is seen as paternalistic and generic and is characterised by a lack of choice and control: indeed it is deemed the ‘tenure of last resort’ (ibid). As such, as Hanley (2012) argues, the UK is divided not just by ‘income and occupation’ but also by

‘the types of homes in which we live’ (p18).

In the context of turbulent economic times which have led to widening issues of affordability of access to home ownership and changing tenure patterns in England (see Chapters two and three) more research is needed to examine how and if the norms and values attached to different housing tenures are changing. A focus on the meanings associated with shared ownership has a lot to add to this analysis for a number of reasons. Firstly, as part-buy part-rent properties, which are often located within housing estates that were previously dominated by social stock, shared ownership potentially questions, or at least reworks, the sharp distinction made between social rented and owner occupied housing (McKee, 2010). Secondly, the allocation of shared ownership has recently widened to include a broader range of low to middle income households, and is no longer restricted to social tenants or key workers (Burgess, 2010: 256). This is significant because shared ownership has become an increasingly important part of overall social housing provision (see Chapter three). The fact that a wider range of households are benefiting potentially questions the stigma attached to ‘affordable’ housing provision (Cowans, 1999: 5).

Thirdly, although designed as a first step to full ownership shared ownership has become a long-term tenure in its own right, rather than a temporary stop gap, for an increasing number of households (Wallace, 2008; Clarke, 2010). The ‘dual’

nature of shared ownership which sits somewhere between owner occupation and social rented housing potentially questions the normative elevation of home ownership as the ideal form of housing consumption over other tenure types. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the ways that official discourses deal with this dual nature, and how households perceive and interpret their status as shared owners across the two case study areas: Cumbria and London.

The structure of this chapter falls into three main section. The first explores the ways in which shared ownership has been presented in public policy documents and marketing material produced at the national and local level. Following Gurney (1999a) the section begins with a wider view of the ways in which housing tenure have been presented in policy literature in recent years. It goes on to examine the extent to which public sector bodies and housing associations utilise positive imagery associated with home ownership as a way to sell the virtues of shared ownership to potential purchasers and the wider public. The second focuses on the extent to which household’s experience of shared ownership as a form of owner occupation live up to their expectations. The section considers the impact of restrictions placed on shared ownership in use, as well as the implications of the tenure’s increasingly long-term nature on household’s perception of the tenure. The final section examines the rationales articulated by households who entered shared ownership, including issues of security and affordability, which challenge pre-conceived assumptions about the need or desire to enter full ownership.

6.2 Presenting shared ownership as home ownership: an analysis of marketing and policy literature

As explored in Chapter three, since its introduction at the national level in 1980 shared ownership has been used as part of a tool kit of measures to promote owner occupation in England. The presentation of shared ownership and other low cost home ownership (LCHO) schemes as a form of owner occupation is politically expedient in the context of continued consumer demand and political commitment to the extension of the tenure as a way to reduce public expenditure on social housing, to promote accumulation through investment in housing assets and to transfer other welfare responsibilities from the state to the individual (Clarke, 2010). Despite cracks appearing in this policy including declining affordability, falling owner occupation rates, an accompanying increase in private renting and the exposed risks of lower income home ownership, policy makers continue to promote the [perceived] moral, social and economic virtues of owner occupation. These include the role of an owned home in personal wealth creation, in encouraging hard work, and in giving households a stake in their homes and neighbourhoods (Ronald, 2008). As well as the importance of ownership in providing the less tangible

benefits associated with a stable and loving ‘home’ including establishing people’s

‘sense of self and cultural identity’ and as a bedrock of ‘ontological security’² (Saunders, 1989: 177).

Whilst the roles of the private and social rented sectors are recognised, there is a persistent assumption that owner occupation is the preferred and most suitable tenure type for the majority. The private rented sector is reserved for younger households with more transient lifestyles whose ‘future plans and career

expectations’ mean that being tied to one property through owner occupation may not be appropriate (DCLG, 2006: 13). The sector ‘offers flexibility’ and ‘choice’ but it is not tied in a meaningful way to the evocative and familial imagery of home (DCLG, 2011a: 33). Although the sector has seen resurgence in recent years, it is still associated with temporary accommodation and is not considered appropriate in the long-term (ibid).

Far from being a space of sanctuary, pride or choice the social rented sector is seen as a ‘trap’ that ‘lock[s] people into dependence’ (DCLG, 2011a: 23). It is strongly associated with and often causally linked to poverty, a lack of social mobility and worklessness (Slater, 2013). The sector is seen as an increasingly marginal tenure to help those in ‘genuine’ housing need over the short rather than long term (DCLG, 2011a: 22). The sense of ‘homelessness’ felt by households in insecure and

temporary accommodation points to the importance of stability and security in making home (Blunt and Dowling, 2006), in policy discourses neither the social or private rented sector are seen to offer this capacity (Gurney, 1999a).

In public discourses the relative social and moral values attached to different types of housing tenure are often taken for granted. Indeed, even within the academic literature some assume that the perceived benefits of home ownership are inherent, and that the demand for owner occupation is fuelled by ‘natural human

dispositions’ (Saunders, 1990: 83). This viewpoint has largely been discredited by scholars who have highlighted the historic and geographic variety of tenure patterns and meanings, as well as the fact that tenure preferences are shaped by government policies impacting upon affordability, quality and supply (Barlow and Duncan, 1988; Hulse, 2008; see also Chapter two above). More recently, there has been a

2 Giddens (1991) uses the term ontological security, to refer to the sense of stability, control and trust in the world which come from a shared sense of reality, a high level of reliability in day-to-day of social interactions, daily routines and habits which keeps ‘chaos’ of an ‘infinite range of possibilities open to the individual’ at bay – ‘chaos is not just disorganization, but a loss of a sense of the very reality of things and other persons’ (p.36)

focus on how tenure discourses have been utilized in powerful ways in order to justify neoliberal social and economic reforms.³ As such, the valorisation of owner occupation and the accompanying stigmatization of social rented homes are seen to be central to reforms to the welfare state which have sought to transfer

responsibility from government to the individual through the private market (Ronald, 2008: Beland, 2007). In this context ideologies⁴ of ‘privatism and individualism’ have become particularly important, with those able to meet their housing needs on the private market differentiated from those who rely on [direct]

state support (Beland, 2007: 64). In the housing field this is manifest in the powerful distinction made between homeowners who are “normal” consumer-citizens, and social tenants who are “abnormal” ‘flawed consumers’ (Flint and Rowland, 2003: 226; Bauman, 1998).⁵ Seen in this light, norms and values do not simply or benignly reflect the inherent characteristics of housing tenures, but shape people’s behavior, attitudes and social status in powerful ways.⁶