Repackaging the Poor? Conceptualizing Neoliberal Reforms of Social Rental Housing

This paper considers the need for conceptual renewal in comparative
housing research. Since the mid-1990s, Kemeny’s model of ‘unitary’
and ‘dualist’ rental markets and Harloe’s classification of ‘mass’ and
‘residual’ social housing provision have been repeatedly recycled in
comparative studies of ‘social’ and ‘public’ housing provision. Amidst
international neoliberal policy mobilities, their models based on
liberal welfare regimes wield particular power. Conceived during
neoliberal cutbacks of public services, Kemeny’s ‘dualist’ rental market
and Harloe’s ‘residual’ model of social housing similarly depict statesubsidised
rental housing provision as bureaucratic, and targeted to
the poor. Despite empirical change, these models are still used to
describe liberal welfare regimes, and to theorise international policy
convergence. Based on a review of recent market-oriented reforms
of state-subsidised rental housing provision in the US, Australia and
England; original neoliberal ‘sites of production’, this contribution asks
whether these conceptual models still reflect the empirics. Findings
diverge from the models, undermining their assumptions about how
neoliberal reforms progress.