The use and abuse of housing tenure

Abstract

This paper examines the concept of housing tenure' and its use in housing research. We argue that this concept is in fact misused. This occurs in two ways. First, it is frequently assumed that taxonomic collectives of tenure like 'owner-occupation' necessarily correspond with significant concrete categories such as housing quality or social status. Second, abstract categories like 'housing class' or 'consumption cleavages' are identified with specific tenures. In both cases 'tenure' is taken well beyond the relations of occupancy and ownership which the term actually describes, and in both cases this leads to severe loss of information and of analytical sensitivity. The paper challenges the use of tenure as some overall shorthand and ends by considering some alternative 'shorthands' which better describe the social relations of housing.

Housing Deprivation in Europe: On the Role of Rental Tenure Types

“…The use of tenure types have also been criticized as the concept of tenure has been used too abstractly and too widely and that it overemphasizes just one element in housing systems (Ball, Harloe & Martens, 1988). Barlow & Duncan (1988 illustrates the problem of analyzing tenure types with a comparison of owner-occupied sector in Sweden and the public housing in…”

Two Types of Rental System? An Exploratory Empirical Test of Kemeny's Rental System Typology

“…Various researchers (Ruonavaara, 1993;Barlow and Duncan, 1988) have demonstrated how diffi cult it is to come up with a universal defi nition for the different tenure sectors. Some countries have forms of tenure that do not exist in other countries and ostensibly similar housing tenures may be intrinsically dissimilar in different types of society.…”

The difference that tenure makes

“…This thesis is associated not only with Ball but with Gray (1982, p291), Barlow and Duncan (1988) (the 'reification of tenure1 -p221) and Sullivan (1989, pi89). All of these writers have argued, in different ways, that although tenure may be important, its importance is substantially derivative from other social forces and social relations, so that it functions as a surrogate, for example, for structure of provision (Ball), social class (Ball and Gray), status coalitions (Gray, and Barlow and Duncan), neighbourhood effect (Barlow and Duncan,p224), sectoral cleavage (tenures are 'the vehicle by which the state influences the consumption' of housing -Ball, 1986, pl54), or means of access (Sullivan, 1989, pl90).…”

“…Tenures as modes of housing distribution The concept of tenure used in this paper has not yet been properly analysed, and is open to the criticisms levelled by Barlow and Duncan (1988) and Sullivan (1989). Analysis of the historical formation of specific tenures avoids the charge of 'reification' (Barlow and Duncan, 1988, p22), but the nature of tenure itself remains 'oversimplified and underanalysed (Sullivan, 1989, pi89).…”

“…Where they disagree, however, is on the nature and degree of this importance. On the one hand, there are those writers who argue that tenure does not signify very much in itself, but only acquires significance insofar as it mediates social relations of other kinds, especially production relations and class relations (Gray, 1982;Ball, 1983Ball, , 1986Berry, 1986;Dickens et al, 1985;Barlow and Duncan, 1988). On the other hand, there are those writers who argue that tenure has specific importance of its own, but tend to characterise tenure essentially in terms of social relations of consumption (Saunders, 1979;Saunders and Williams, 1988;Dunleavy, 1980;Dunleavy and Husbands, 1985;Kemeny, 1981;Duke and Edgell, 1984;Hamnett, 1989).…”