Homeownership, Social Policy, and the Crisis: How Austerity Policies Fortify Property-Based Private Welfare Systems

It has been argued that the nexus of increasing homeownership rates, accumulation of housing wealth, as well as financialization of housing markets have facilitated the emergence a social policy model in which households and families draw on their home as a source of private and collective security, especially at a later stage of the life course. If ever there was opportunity to reinforce such a property-based welfare system, it is the 'black swan' financial crisis and its consequent backlash on public budgets, the rationale being that the threat of state bankruptcies and economic breakdowns has substantially constrained the various institutional and political forces working against reforms. To investigate whether and under which premises policy-makers have acted on these opportunities, be it due to ideological beliefs or actual external pressures, this paper applies a qualitative content analysis of the structure of austerity measures in five distinct European countries (Netherlands, England, Germany, Sweden, Italy) in the period 2009-2013. The main contention here is that if recent reforms or policy proposals have neglected the housing domain altogether, or even more revealing, if housing policy reform has targeted the social/public rental sector (including all kinds of rent allowances) but not the owner-occupied sector (e.g. through keeping tax advantages and allowances in place or even implementing new ones), we might see a more permanent policy transformation towards a property-based welfare model that postulates the availability and utilization of private housing wealth. On the other hand, social policy research has continuously shown that, depending on welfare regime and timing, endogenous pressures are translated differently into reform processes across countries. Hence, with its comparative approach this study also seeks to contribute to the discussion on whether emergencies and crisis situations lead to the convergence of capitalist and social policy models or whether long-standing regime differences persist nonetheless.