Alex D Marsh

Housing Deprivation and Health: A Longitudinal Analysis

While there is a longitudinal literature that considers the impact of poor socio-economic circumstances upon health, the more specific impact of poor housing upon health is much less frequently studied longitudinally. This paper draws on the National Child Development Study to examine the impact upon health of poor housing through the life course. The analysis takes the novel approach of constructing a composite severity of ill health measure to act as the dependent variable. Poor housing is operationalised through a housing deprivation index calculated for each sweep of the NCDS. The index of multiple housing deprivation goes beyond traditional concerns with the quality and amenity of a dwelling to incorporate key subjective factors such as satisfaction with dwelling or residential area: these subjective factors play a particularly important role in the index. The key result is that, even when other relevant factors are allowed for, the NCDS data suggest that experience of both current and past poor housing is significantly associated with greater likelihood of ill health. Moreover, for those who are living in non-deprived housing conditions in adulthood, ill health is more likely among those who experienced housing deprivation in earlier life than among those who did not. Thus, history matters. The analysis also highlights the increasing inadequacy of conventional measures of housing deprivation.

Modelling Tenants' Choices in the Public Rented Sector: A Stated Preference Approach

This paper uses a stated preference (SP) approach to examine the potential housing choices of tenants in the UK public housing sector. The paper begins by explaining the policy significance of the choices that such tenants might make if alternative dwellings were offered to them. It then discusses the SP approach in general before explaining the way in which it is used in this study. The results of the SP modelling exercise are presented. These suggest that tenants are unlikely to move to housing estates that they see as being worse than their current estate solely in response to lower rents. This is because a number of factors other than rent are of more significance in their potential housing decisions.

Uncertainty, Expectations and Behavioural Aspects of Housing Market Choices

Abstract Housing is a complex commodity and housing market choices carry with them substantial economic and social consequences for the households making them. Housing market decisions are complex, uncertain and involve expectations-formation. This paper argues that the standard economic theory of decision-making under uncertainty – expected utility theory – is particularly ill-suited as the basis for understanding such complexity. The paper then explores alternative avenues for potential development, reviewing the key characteristics of owner-occupied housing markets and housing search, and examining how the resources of institutional and behavioural economics could be used to inform our understanding of the residential mobility process. The paper concludes by outlining an agenda for empirical research.

THE INEXORABLE RISE OF THE RATIONAL CONSUMER? THE BLAIR GOVERNMENT AND THE RESHAPING OF SOCIAL HOUSING

The Blair government is implementing an ambitious agenda for the reform of the access, pricing and subsidy of social housing in England. This paper argues on the basis of available evaluation evidence that we should expect a muted response from consumers to the incentives created by these reforms. In this respect, the reforms are only likely to fulfil their apparent objectives in part. The paper notes some significant tensions within the reform agenda. The issue of how housing choice is modelled is highlighted as key. The paper argues that if we are serious about understanding the impact of these policy reforms on letting outcomes then we need to return to first principles and re-examine our understanding of housing market decision-making. It concludes by suggesting an alternative reading of current developments, focusing upon control.

Setting the Rents of Social Housing: The Impact and Implications of Rent Restructuring in England

The question of how the rents of social housing should be set has been a matter of debate in many European countries. This paper draws on research into the probable impacts of the UK governments policy to restructure rents in England to explore some of the issues involved in determining the rents of social housing. The paper discusses why social rent setting is a particular issue in the UK and how the government is seeking to address it through the rent restructuring policy that is currently being implemented. Then, after outlining the nature of the study on which the paper is based, the local effects of the policy on social housing rents are examined. An assessment is made of whether the policy is likely to fulfil its explicit objectives and it is concluded that only some of these are likely to be met. It is also concluded that the current direction of UK policy raises some questions that are likely to be of concern beyond the UK.

Community, neighbourhood, responsibility: Contemporary currents in housing studies

Community, neighbourhood and responsibility have emerged as prominent themes in contemporary housing policy and practice in the UK. They imply questions of fundamental importance regarding the factors shaping contemporary urban society. Housing debates around these themes resonate with currents within wider urban and social policy. With the erosion of state welfare, ideas of community and neighbourhood—with their undertones of self-help, mutual aid and positive socialisation—have a particular attraction to politicians keen to underline the responsibilities that should be set alongside claims to rights. Injunctions to, and requirements upon, individuals to exercise ‘ethical selfgovernment’—to be subject to and active within their community/neighbourhood—are changing contemporary government/governance. Such initiatives are felt to be an appropriate response to the perceived growth in incivility in an increasingly fractured and fractious urban society. In itself, incivility has implications for the sustainability of local areas and for spatial segregation, as those households able to exercise choice seek refuge away from what have been characterised variously as ‘poor spaces’ (Berghman, 1995) or ‘dead, wild zones’ (Lash, 2002). These themes—community, neighbourhood, responsibility—reflect the coalescence of our own interdisciplinary interests (Cowan & Marsh, 2001a). The interpretation of their role in, as well as their significance and implications for, contemporary theory, policy and practice are tasks engaging scholars from diverse backgrounds. It was our pleasure to co-organise the Housing Studies Association’s Autumn Conference 2003, which brought researchers working from a range of social scientific and socio-legal perspectives to Bristol to explore the themes further. The papers in this Special Issue have their origins in papers presented at the conference. In this introduction, we locate some of the key ideas in the papers within a broader discussion of our themes, taking each theme in turn. Such a conceptual separation is for the purposes of introduction only. As will become apparent, the themes are closely connected—in some cases inextricably linked—in contemporary debates. Most of the papers in this Special Issue therefore connect with more

Local governance: the relevance of transaction cost economics

Only relatively recently have the implications of transaction cost economics (TCE) for local governance been appreciated. TCE appears to offer a weapon against fragmentation. This paper uses contracting for social housing management to illustrate the possibilities. However, TCE has attracted considerable criticism both inside and outside economics. Any analysis seeking inspiration from TCE should be informed by an understanding of the central critical concerns. This paper suggests that TCE currently offers limited assistance to the analysis of local service organisation. Analysis of local governance which seeks inspiration from the economics literature must move beyond TCE to more institutionally sensitive approaches.

There's Regulatory Crime, and then there's Landlord Crime: from 'Rachmanites' to 'Partners'

This article considers local authority strategies towards the regulation and prosecution of private landlords who commit the criminal offences of unlawful eviction and harassment. Generally, local authorities operate compliance-based strategies, rarely (if ever) resorting to prosecution. In seeking to explain this approach, the article draws upon the literature concerning regulatory crime, but also distinguishes local authority responses to landlord crime from regulatory crime as more typically conceived. Broadly, it is argued that, while there are clear parallels with other areas of regulatory activity, there is much that is different about landlord crime, particularly as a result of central government strategies towards the private rented sector, the legislative background to landlord crime, and the motivations behind local approaches to regulation.

Pricing Public Housing Services: Mirroring the Market?

This paper is concerned with the determination of rents in the local authority sector. It concentrates on the determination of relative rents in particular. Local authorities in England have traditionally had autonomy in determining the rents for individual dwellings in their housing stock, but the 1989 Local Government and Housing Act introduced the requirement that the relativities in the public sector should be determined with reference to those obtaining in the local private rented sector. This policy, which still remains in force under the new government, is intended to price public housing more efficiently and links to long standing concerns with issues such as under-occupation. The paper critically examines the rationale behind this policy. It advances the argument that not only are the price differentials in the private sector not necessarily a good guide for efficient pricing in the public sector, but also that the conditions in the public sector are unlikely to ensure that changing rent differen...

The Methodology of The Public Choice Research Programme: The Case Of ‘Voting With Feet’

In the half century since ‘A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures’ was published, as a contribution to the debate over the efficient provision of public goods, the paper has become a mainstay of the public choice approach to public finance. The core of Charles Tiebout’s argument – that near optimal provision and allocation of local public goods can result from consumers’ making locational choices between competing local jurisdictions offering different tax-service bundles – is a discernible strand in many discussions of local fiscal arrangements and the structure of local government. There is a voluminous literature devoted to testing, critiquing, defending and refining the Tiebout model. For example, a decade ago Keith Dowding, Peter John and Stephen Briggs were able to review some 200 empirical studies that had sought to test for Tiebout effects. The model has also generated a fascination among policy makers. For example, the logic of fiscal mobility runs through the 1986 UK Green Paper Paying for Local Government, which led to the Local Government Finance Act 1988 and the introduction of the community charge. Notwithstanding that experience, in 2002 the central government department the responsible for local government in England – the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister – commissioned a review of the links between finance and non-finance elements of local government to include the Tiebout literature. The review noted that much of the literature on Tiebout originates in the USA and concludes that the Tiebout model is less relevant in the UK because the structure and funding of local authorities differ significantly. However, the annual furore over increases in property-based local taxation in recent years, including the jailing of a 73 year old pensioner for non-payment, has reopened the debate about appropriate mechanisms for raising tax revenue locally. In this context, the issue of fiscal localism and the possibility of local income or sales taxes – which do not currently exist in the UK – have New Political Economy, Vol. 12, No. 2, June 2007