2
3
“If ‘sharing well into adulthood has become the new “living at home until
marriage”’, then we need to pay better attention to this social and cultural shift
in home and its policy ramifications. As for me, my 30-something-year-old self is
further adjusting my housing aspirations. Rather than home ownership, I am
dreaming of secure, long-term, affordable share housing in which tenants have
better rights. I am not alone #generationshare.”
― Sophie Maalsen, “Generation Share”:
digitalized geographies of shared housing, pp. 9
4
5
Acknowledgments
Amsterdam, 19th June 2019 I would like to thank a number of people which have been of importance throughout the research project. Without their contribution and support my thesis would not have become what it is now. Firstly, I would like to thank my participants for taking the time to sit down with me and discuss their personal experiences. Especially during the data analysis stage, I told myself I should not forget that these are actual people with emotional stories rather than mere output. Housing turns out to be a topic that not only intersects labour and life course, but also the search for a safe and secure home, which has emotional consequences when unable to access. I would also like to thank Anneleen Lagae, Maarten Versluijs and Paul Heidecker from the Municipality of Amsterdam, David Anderson from the Glasgow City Council and Jennifer McGonigle from Cairn Letting ld. for our insightful conversations on Amsterdam’s and Glasgow’s housing context and their provision of related data and documents. I would also like to thank my supervisor Richard Ronald for his academic insights, honest feedback and theoretical suggestions. It has definitely been helpful to get a sense of direction. His continued feedback to “find the crux” has helped me to push myself out of infinite nuance and into more bold statements. Lastly, I want to say a big thank you to myself. Given that the last two years have not been the easiest, I am truly proud of myself for working hard to finalize my master’s program and present you my final product.
7
Summary
While the current generation of young adults have gained more choice, agency, and autonomy in shaping their life courses, they simultaneously face increased instability in employment security, family formation and secure housing compared to previous generations. Not only are young people more often single and flexibly employed, stricter mortgage lending criteria and down-payment requirements since the Great Financial Crisis [GFC] are rendering stable housing pathways into home ownership increasingly elusive. As a result, research on ‘Generation Rent’ (McKee 2012) has shown how these developments result in a growing reliance on rental market insecurity and frustrate young people’s aspirations. However, while previous research highlights young people’s chancing experiences, preferences and choices, the ways in which they negotiate constraining economic realities and local housing chances remain under researched. Using a mixed-methods approach consisting of semi-structured interviews with young middle-class people in shared housing in Amsterdam and Glasgow, I illuminate how these young people experience a mismatch between aspiration and reality, for which intergenerational transfers of wealth serve as an escape mechanism. Using a Bourdieusian lens to emphasize the role of economic reality rather than subjective preference in housing aspirations, I suggest that class-based structures still determine young people’s ability to fulfil their aspirations, particularly in the field of housing, rather than mere self-reflexivity and individual effort such as the individualization thesis suggests.
Key words: housing aspirations, shared housing, adulthood transitions, flexible employment, intergenerational support, home ownership
9
Table of contents
11
14
23
33
47
58
68
72
83
1. Introduction
2. Theoretical framework
Part II
3. Research methodology and design
4. Housing system reconfiguration as
economic reality
5. Aspiration vs. reality: young people
and aspiration gaps
6. Filling the gaps: intergenerational
support mechanisms
7. Conclusions and discussion
Appendixes
Part III
Part I
10
11
1. Introduction
Around the world, cities are in high demand for their scarce living space. While Glaeser (2011) praises the “triumph of the city”, these global cities are simultaneously getting more expensive. Yet, affordable and easily accessible housing often functions as a launching site for different types of newcomers, most typically students and young professionals seeking work and education opportunities. Throughout the early twentieth century, the dominance of neoliberal housing policy has fueled easy access to mortgage credit and continuously rising house prices in cities across the Global North (Forrest & Hirayama, 2015). However, following the Great Financial Crisis [GFC], mortgage lending has tightened while social housing is generally in decline. Research has shown that, homeownership in Europe has now become a goal unobtainable until later life, if even possible at all (McKee & Hoolachan, 2015; Arundel and Doling, 2017). While home ownership allowed previous generations to access a source of financial security for later life, the current generation of young adults is increasingly less equipped with the means to access similar levels of stability. As a result, across Europe and especially in liberal welfare regimes, young people are now increasingly relying on deregulated rental sectors to meet their housing needs (McKee 2012).
Particularly shared housing, defined as “households consisting of unrelated individuals living in self-contained houses and apartments” has regained renewed attention as a tool to reduce costs (Heath, 2004: 162; McNamara and Connell, 2007). Following these constraints, Maalsen (2018) even argues for the emergence ‘Generation Share’, a generation of sharers characterized by long-term tenure and diverse demographics.
At the same, young people’s transitions into adulthood are increasingly complex and stretched out. While adulthood transitions were long regarded as gradual transformations from marrying, to settling down and having children, young people have gained more choice, agency and autonomy in shaping their life courses from the 1980’s onwards (Giddens, 1991, 1990;
12 Arnett, 1997; Beck, 1992). Many authors have argued how these developments have led to changing preferences, choices and desires in terms of “housing aspirations” in the field of housing and youth transitions (Colic-Peisker and Johnson, 2012, Moreno Minguez, 2016). However, Crawford & McKee (2018a, 2018b) and Preece et al. (2019) argue that these approaches neglect how aspirations change within the reconfiguration of housing systems and welfare states. My thesis aims to further address this conceptual and empirical gap by applying Bourdieu’s (1977, 1984) dialectical approach to aspirations to the experiences and desires of young working people aged 25 to 35 living in shared housing. In short, I will argue that economic realities, such as young people’s flexible employment and their lack of capital significantly shape the housing aspirations of these young sharers. Yet, due to the normalization of home ownership in previous decades, many negotiate these economic realities by tapping into a source of private wealth to overcome the gap between reality and aspiration. In doing so, my findings point to the crucial role of economic endowments and social class in navigating housing consumption. Finally, by comparing these aspirations between the case of Glasgow and the case of Amsterdam – two cases which are embedded in a traditionally interventionist but increasingly neoliberal welfare regimes – the research aligns these aspirations with the wider political economy of adulthood transitions.
Before turning to the central findings of my thesis, I will first turn to the most important theoretical developments on the intersection between housing and adulthood, including individualization theory, the flexibilization of labour, the financialization of housing and the emergence of intergenerational divides. Next, my thesis turns to the methodology section where I will first discuss the conceptualization of housing aspirations and its positionality within the wider comparative strategy for the cases of Amsterdam and Glasgow. Thereafter, before turning to my findings, the methodological tools, data gathering process and data analysis will be discussed. The findings section consists of three chapters. The first chapter discussing the national and urban economic
13 factors in Amsterdam and Glasgow shaping the economic realities in young people’s lives. The second chapter focusses on the ways in which young people negotiate these economic realities in constructing their housing aspirations, showing how a gap between aspiration and reality emerges. The third chapter discusses how intergenerational support serves as a mechanism to bridge the gap between aspiration and reality, creating intra-generational inequalities even among highly-educated, middle-class young people. My thesis ends with a concluding section in which the findings will be put in a wider discussion, building on a long-standing debate between individuality and socioeconomic class.
14
2. Theoretical framework
2.1 The lengthening of transitions into adulthood
Transitions into adulthood have long been regarded as “a gradual process characterized by ‘semi-autonomy,’ with young adults waiting until they were economically self-sufficient to set up independent households, marry, and have children” (Settersten and Ray, 2010: 21). Especially until the 1970s, secure employment, readily available housing and the normalization of early family formation structured moves from the family home into social housing or owner-occupation, sometimes with short stays in private rental units (Ford et al., 2002). Following de-industrialization and wage stagnation, however, conventional life-course transitions have expressed increasing heterogeneity corresponding with a rise in non-marital cohabitation, one-parent families, single-person households and household debt (Wall, 1989). As formal marriage has lost its obligation and fertility rates are in decline, the traditional nuclear family has lost its role as principal social institution (Kobrin, 1976). Individuals now move more frequently through a complex array of social relations which have led to a decoupling of kinship, and the destabilization of the traditional definition of a household as "a social unit occupying a single housing space" (Buzar, 2007). Within Housing Studies, these transitions through different tenures and household sizes are often described in terms of ‘pathways’ (Clapham, 2005; Clapham et al., 2014). As part of these housing pathways, a completely new phenomenon of moving out to live with unrelated peers has emerged (Mulder, 2009). While communal living arrangements such ‘co-operative communities’ and ‘joint residence’ already emerged in the 1970s as (politicized) alternatives to the traditional nuclear family home, extended career and education trajectories as well as changing norms regarding self-fulfillment have further led to a growth in house sharing (Steinfuhrer and Haase, 2009; Jarvis, 2017). Shared housing offers a solution for those seeking accommodation in highly-developed inner-cities featuring educational institutions, job opportunities, commercial and cultural facilities,
15 and lifestyle opportunities (Klinenberg, 2012; Milikowski, 2018). As such, the emergence of these shared housing, sometimes called 'urban tribes', have transformed the geographies of housing demand in large metropolitan areas (Buzar, 2007; Watters, 2004).
2.2 Individuality, risk, and insecurity
However, while young people have gained more freedom and agency in making decisions in terms of lifestyle, household size, and tenure (Kley & Mulder, 2010), they are also expected to navigate multiple uncertain outcomes and actively shape their biographies (Furlong, 2009). During the modernist decades of the twentieth-century, the social order and the predictability of day-to-day life associated derived from the private realm of the family home used to provide people with a sense of “ontological security” (Giddens, 1990, 1991), However, as family traditions erode, natural risks are eliminated and knowledge is rapidly produced and distributed, sociologists such as Beck (1992) and Giddens (1990, 1991) argue that social mobility has increased with individuals taking precedence over society and social communities. In short, class-determined life courses have given way to a “do-it-yourself biography or “reflexive biography” in which the individual is to self-identify the most promising pathway into adulthood (Furlong, 2009). This also means that, as life courses become more open-ended and unpredictable, individuals may feel sometimes feel as if they have little control over their own circumstances (Beck 1992; Giddens, 1990, 1991). Bauman (2000, 2005, 2007) conceptualizes such societies as ‘liquid modernity’ where “the conditions under which its members act change faster than it takes the ways of acting to consolidate into habits and routines” (Bauman, 2005: 1). Bonoli (2005) argues that this tension between intended, deliberate actions and unintended risks and outcomes has generated new social needs and demands – new social risks (NSRs) – which are particularly concentrated among young people. As social security schemes are still based on traditional assumptions regarding labour market participation, typical careers and family patterns, while young people’s lives are increasingly flexible, they face the risk of
16 insufficient social security coverage (Bonoli 2005). Given the continued normalization of linear transitions into adulthood, Foucault argues that aspirations for stability and security persist while the social conditions which shaped them have ceased to exist (Crawford and McKee 2018, 2018b). Consequently, reaching these goals takes more time and additional measures compared to previous generations. A crucial addition in this regard is therefore Arnett (2000)’s concept of ‘emerging adulthood’ which involves that young people experience instability in multiple facets of transitioning into adulthood to achieve the same level of security older generations perceive to have. As such, the life stage between adolescence and young adulthood is increasingly complex and devoid of predictability. While he argues that young people remain confident that they will “get there”, many other scholars have now come to argue that there are a number of structural socioeconomic constraints which are significantly disrupting young people’s transitions into adulthood (McKee, 2012; Clapham et al., 2014; Hill et al., 2015). These constraints are discussed below.
2.3 Labour market flexibilization
Firstly, in terms of education and employment, young people’s transitions into adulthood now feature extended engagement in higher level education and suspended labour market entry (MacDonald, 2009; Wyn, 2009). Not only do many choose to hold their options open in response to an unpredictable and insecure world, it is also a way of adapting to fast-changing skill requirements and the rise of flexible employment (Wyn, 2009). In current modern capitalist societies, standardized full employment is in decline and young people are disproportionately involved in flexible, sometimes precarious work (Vosko, 2006; Lersch and Dewilde, 2015). Vosko (2006: 3) defines precarious work as “forms of work involving limited social benefits and statutory entitlements, job insecurity, low wages, and high risks of ill-health”. As opposed to income security, which is associated with job stability and a high chance of reemployment, employment insecurity is associated with higher chances unemployment, job changes and income volatility (Lersch and Dewilde, 2015).
17 These authors generally argue that, in terms of insecure and low paid work, precarious work is mostly concentrated among less educated workers. Regardless, despite negative experiences attached to insecure work, some scholars argue that fluctuations in early work life are part of lengthened transitions into the labour market (Quintini et al., 2007), while others even see it as part of the active advancement of working lives in terms of ‘portfolio working’ and ‘employment entrepreneurship’ (Handy, 1994). Even more so, according to Bauman (2006: 4), young and highly educated people who take “precariousness as value, instability as imperative, hybridity as richness” and “tolerance for an absence of itinerary and direction”, tend to be most successful in modern, "liquid societies". Nonetheless, Goos and Manning (2003) and Felstead et al. (2003), argue that an under-utilization of skills is increasingly common, even among sections of the highly-education population, – indicated by the increasing number of graduates in non-graduate jobs, temporary positions and zero hours’ contracts. Furthermore, Watt (2005) has demonstrated that, compared to the ‘metropolitan new middle classes’ which consist of managerial professionals with high volumes of economic capital, a class of so-called ‘marginal professionals’ has appeared. While marginal professionals are in a position to pursue their career objective due to their social and cultural capital, they lack the economic capital to achieve financial security (Watt, 2005). As such, young people in a situation of employment insecurity are less likely to enter first-time homeownership – not only due to high transaction costs, but also because they expect future residential mobility and insecurity for occupational reasons (Coulson and Fisher, 2002). Preece (2017) therefore argues that labour market precarity makes housing market stability even more important in order for young people to manage fluctuations in work and deal with the insecurities of their life phase. As such, the changing role of housing as a source of wealth and stability in early adulthood will therefore be discussed below.
18
2.4 The financialization of housing
Home ownership was long normalized as a way for individuals to accumulate wealth to pay for their welfare needs across the life cycle (Lowe et al., 11). This has not just led to a restructuring of welfare states across the Global North in which individuals are made responsible for their own well-being through wealth accumulation, but also to the introduction of financial schemes and policy interventions to stimulate property ownership (Forrest & Murie, 1988). For these home owners, housing equity made up the largest financial resource for storing and accumulating household wealth (Doling & Ronald, 2010). However, following the Global Financial Crisis [GFC] many people were suddenly facing employment insecurity and higher chances of unemployment, while mortgage lenders were forced to introduce stricter lending criteria for accessing mortgage credit. Although house prices have recovered and are rising again across Europe (see figure 1), restricted access to mortgage finance coupled with the flexibilization of labour have created unfavorable conditions for the current generation of aspirational buyers (Arundel, 2017). Not only are many young adults reliant on a flexible work
Figure 1: House price indices (Euro area and EU
aggregates; index levels)
19 contract or a single income, they also lack significant savings to meet the increased transaction costs attached to becoming a property owner (Hochstenbach and Boterman, 2014). Yet, despite the fact that the promise of an inclusive home ownership is no longer available, neoliberal agendas, the hollowing-out of welfare benefits and the residualisation of social housing to low-income groups highlights the ongoing normalization of property ownership to provide individuals with economic security (Arundel, 2017). In cultural and social terms as well, states across the Global North continue to prescribe property ownership as signifier of “proper middle-class achievement” (Ronald, 2008; Ronald and Druta, 2017). As such Arundel (2017) points to the growing necessity for aspirational first-time-buyers to tap into a source of private equity on top of their mortgage credit to access meet transaction costs or bid over market value, especially on competitive markets. Acces to housing wealth and the ability to benefit from rising house prices is therefore increasingly granted to those most successful on the market, or as Forrest and Hirayama (2015: 237) state, “the primes rather than the subprimes”. As a result, many young people are spending longer periods of their early working lives in precarious, temporary and semi-illegal housing arrangements in deregulated rental sectors, hence the sobriquet ‘Generation Rent’ (McKee, 2012). Altogether, these developments show that, while the current generation of young adults tends to be higher educated and working more professional jobs, they lack the means to achieve what was readily given to many middle-class households a few decades ago (Bourdieu 1990, 1998, 2000; Crawford and McKee 2018a, 2018b). The financialization of housing – including property ownership and the accumulation of housing wealth – is therefore a clear facet in the emergence of intergenerational inequalities (Aalbers, 2016; Arundel, 2017).
2.5 Social class and parental support
Furthermore, (Arundel, 2017) also points to a growth in intragenerational differences in young people’s ability to rely on their parents’ housing wealth for welfare support. In contrast with Beck (1992), Giddens (1990, 1991) and
20 Bauman (2006) who emphasize the freedom and choice in young people’s ability to self-direct their own housing biographies, other sociologists such as Bourdieu (1987) and Dean (2003) argue that class structures are nevertheless maintained through social reproduction. Bengtson (2001) has argued that, although social life may seem individualised based on household size and composition, important family functions such as support and well-being now overlap between generations through an implicit ‘(inter)generational contract’ (Bengtson & Lowenstein, 2003; Bengtson, 2001). To define intergenerational support from parents to adult children, Swartz (2009) distinguishes between affective and instrumental support. While the first is defined through emotional support and the provision of advice, the latter takes the form of financial and practical support. For example, according to Dale & Krueger (2014) parental investment in a college educated to prevent financial burden and student debt is correlated with financial well-being and labour market advancement in later life. Yet, most significant is the impact of “in-vivo” transfers from parents to children aimed at leveraging equity for first-time purchase (Druta and Ronald, 2016; Arundel, 2017). According to Hochstenbach (2018: 690) such financial support is increasingly important “in allowing young adults to get onto and subsequently climb the housing ladder. Furthermore, not just the transmission of economic capital, but the ways in which young people are socialized with certain tenure preferences also means that children of home-owning parents are more likely to desire to become homeowners themselves (Mulder et al., 2015). Such socialization also allows for the transfer of intangible tools and resources such as providing useful social networks or know-how on the optimal use of housing regulations in order to support their children’s housing trajectories (Boterman, 2012). Finally, despite growing intergenerational reliance across Europe, strong demographic and socioeconomic variation can be found in families’ ability to deploy this financial strategy of extended support (Druta et al., 2018). Generally speaking, young people from higher socio-economic backgrounds can count on more financial support throughout early adulthood compared to those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (Stone et al., 2011; Clapham et
21 al., 2014). These intergenerational transmissions of economic capital thus create inequalities in young people’s ability to navigate through competitive housing markets and secure future wealth for later life (Arundel, 2017, Lennartz et al. 2016.
2.6 Conclusion
To conclude, while early family formation, employment security and secure housing were widespread among previous generations, these economic conditions have now become more flexible, open-ended and unpredictable. Not only are young people postponing the phase of settling down, they are also more often desiring a degree of flexibility and freedom in the ways they navigate partnership, education, employment and lifestyle. Beck (1992), Giddens (1990, 1991) and Bauman (2005) therefore argue that the individualisation of life course has eroded class structures and given way to reflexive and self-determined pathways into adulthood. Past research on young people’s housing aspirations equally emphasize choice, decision-making and agency (Colic-Peisker and Johnson, 2012; Moreno Minguez, 2016). However, as this chapter has shown, growing individual agency and choice also means higher exposure to insecurity risk, fuelled by the financialization of housing and the flexibilization of labour (Forrest & Hirayama 2015; Preece 2017). Research on the role of objectivity structures in the ways young people experience housing systems and adapt their decisions remains however, neglected (Preece et al. 2019). My thesis addresses this imbalance by prioritizing the constraining economic realities in young people’s search for housing autonomy and highlight the gaps between aspiration and reality. Furthermore, by including an intergenerational dimension, my thesis further aims to show how young people actively negotiate these gaps. The main research questions and sub-questions are the following:
“What are the housing aspirations of young middle-class people living in shared rental housing in Amsterdam and Glasgow and how do they negotiate the economic realities shaping them?”
22
1. Which national and urban economic factors underlying a housing system reconfiguration shape young people’s economic realities in Amsterdam and Glasgow?
2. How do young people in shared housing negotiate these economic realities in constructing their housing aspirations and how does this lead to aspirational gaps?
3. How do young people in shared housing use intergenerational support as a mechanism to overcome these aspirational gaps?
4. How does the local national and urban context shape the housing aspirations of young people in shared housing in Amsterdam and Glasgow in different ways?
3. Research design & methodology
“For social scientists, the study of young people’s lives provides a unique opportunity to study processes of change, to understand the way in which inequalities are reproduced between generations and to reflect on the ways in which structure and agency combine to shape lives” Andy Furlong, Young People and Social Change, 2009: p. 1 In order to generate an understanding of the housing aspirations of young middle-class sharers, I have conducted a multiple case study in Amsterdam and Glasgow. In doing so, I follow Yin’s (2014: 16) approach to case study research as an empirical, yet holistic inquiry that “investigates a contemporary phenomenon in depth, and within its real-world context.” This chapter presents the central research design as a logical sequence or blueprint for connecting the empirical data to the research question. It does so by first discussing how the real-world context in which the case study is embedded is conceptualised. It then goes on to present the research’s comparative strategy for comparing the cases of Amsterdam and Glasgow. The second part of the chapter sets out the research methodology, going from case selection and sampling, to data gathering, and finally, data analysis.3.1 Conceptualisation
My research follows a multiple-case design (Yin, 2014). The two cases address young people’s housing aspirations in Amsterdam and young people’s housing aspirations in Glasgow, within a wider population of adulthood transitions. In line with Heinz (2009: 4), I argue that youth transitions are neither linear nor emergent, but rather “contingent and linked to complex interactions between individual decisions, opportunity structures, and social pathways with more or less institutionalized guidelines and regulations”. They are shaped by individuals actively constructing their biographies embedded in time and place, and the social circumstances and events on which they are,
24 in part, dependent (Heinz and Marshall 2003). Followingly, within these transitions, housing aspirations can be defined as “desires to achieve housing-related ambitions in the future, encapsulating optimistic assessments of what can be realized” (Preece et al. 2019: 4). My conceptualisation of housing aspirations builds on Bourdieu’s (1977, 1984) argument that aspirations derive from the interplay between the individual’s subjective desires and the objective possibilities which make them possible. In doing so, the ontological relationship between the individual’s agency and the wider economic structures affecting their subjective preferences is approached as dialectical (Ortner 2006). Young adults may be constrained by economic circumstances, but still have the agency and understanding to resist it by means of deliberate housing practices (Ortner 2006: 5). Figure 2 presents a causal model of my theoretical approach to housing aspirations within a wider context of welfare and housing-dependent youth transitions. As the main inquiry of my thesis is not to test pre-existing theory on housing aspirations but rather to extend its scope to relatively novel and under researched contexts, the figure should be seen as a heuristic device for the relationship between my research questions and the central outcome. Based on Goertz & Mahoney (2005)’s two-level theory, I argue for conceptualisation at two levels of analysis in order to offer additional dimensions to the exploration of young people’s housing aspirations. Figure 2 shows the basic-level factors ‘subjective preferences’ and ‘economic realities’ and their direct relationship with the central outcome. The factors ‘class’, ‘financial independence’ and ‘intergenerational support’ are secondary level factors which are at a less central level and thus affect the outcome indirectly.
§
Subjective preferences
Firstly, while the individualisation thesis (Beck 1992; Giddens 1990, 1991; Bauman 2006), holds that individuals have gained more agency and choice to self-direct their adulthood transitions, Bourdieu (1987) and Dean (2003) argue that class structures, inequalities and social reproduction are still maintained. This means that the individual’s
25 subjective choices and preferences are socially structured insofar as their dispositions [habitus] which direct them are unequally distributed (Bourdieu 1977; 1984). My conceptualisation thus allows for the role of social endowments in the construction of housing aspirations such as economic, cultural and symbolic capital which constitute elements of one’s class position (Bourdieu, 1986, 1991). This also means that young people’s aspirations are not exempt from ‘moral distinctions’ such as problematizing renting and glorifying home ownership – notions which are often constructed through their class background (McKee et al. 2017).
Figure 2. Two-level model of housing aspirations Source: author
26 §
Economic realities
At the same time, rather than making uninformed, intrinsically motivated choices, individuals are socialized under certain economic conditions with collective conventions, shared norms and values (Bourdieu 1990). Opportunity structures such as the economic resources available, to them make that individuals tend to ‘want’ what they deem obtainable and ‘refuse’ what they are already denied (Bourdieu 1984; McKee et al. 2017). As such, this research aims to include the individual’s economic resources as central objective reality to understand how they work as constraining or enabling factors in realizing their desires and choices (Crawford & McKee 2018a, 2018b). Figure 2 shows the economic resources, both from the self as well as from external resources, directly influencing their economic realities, namely financial independence and intergenerational support.
§
Contextual factors
Thirdly, while this interplay takes place at the individual level, the economic realities shaping young people’s housing aspirations are dependent on the wider political economy, for what is needed to realize certain ambitions is dependent on factors largely outside of people’s control such as discursive narratives, macroeconomic developments and governmental interventions (Furlong and Cartmel, 2007; Preece et al., 2019). Generating an understanding of the housing aspirations of young people in shared housing is therefore impossible without considering the wider contextual factors shaping them. Figure 2 shows that ‘housing accessibility’ is conceptualised as the main contextual factor indirectly shaping young people’s housing aspirations. In turn, housing accessibility is determined by secondary level factors such as the welfare state and the housing system which are indirectly determining the economic realities in young people’s lives.
27
3.2 Case selection and comparative strategy
Two cases were sampled to reflect a relatively similar body of young, highly-educated in a similar welfare and housing context for the sake of making cross-case theoretical inferences (Seawright and Gerring, 2008). Previous research has found that liberal welfare regimes feature traditions of sharing in the private rental sector (Heath et al., 2017). On the other hand, in familistic societies in Southern Europe young adults tend to remain within the parental home before entering into home ownership (Bricocoli and Sabatinelli, 2016). These explanations do not apply to the Scottish and Dutch case. Instead, the national welfare and housing context of Scotland and the Netherlands deviates from previous studies in very similar ways, namely, a traditionally interventionist welfare regime featuring a high share of regulated rental as well as governmental schemes for accessing home ownership. Furthermore, a city-level case study is suitable for the analysis of constraining economic realities in young people’s housing aspirations as dense urban environments best reflect the dominant reconfigurations in housing systems (Harvey, 2006). For example, despite each city’s traditionally regulatory welfare regime with widespread social housing provision, both cases host a growing group of young people in housing precarity and shared housing. In Amsterdam, the percentage of shared housing, defined as consisting of households of at least three unrelated adults, increased from 4,5% in 2015 to 5,4% in 2018 (Wever et al., 2018). In Glasgow, the total share of “Houses in Multiple Occupation [HMOs] increased by 10% from 2003 to 2013 (The Glasgow and the Clyde Valley Housing Market Partnership, 2015). Given that these developments have not been explained for traditionally interventionist regimes, my thesis follows a deviant case study design (Gerring, 2006; Seawright and Gering, 2008). In doing so, my contribution not only aims to explore the housing aspirations of young people in an unexpected context, but also, and perhaps precisely in doing so, aimed at amending pre-existing theory on housing transitions. Especially due to the use of a multiple case-design, the addition a deviant context will hopefully help to redefine the scope of pre-existing theory and generate a fuller understanding of how aspirations work “on the ground”
28 (Skocpol and Somers, 1980).
3.3 Research methodology
My research methodology follows a mixed-methods approach including at least two kinds of data and two ways of collecting them (Small, 2011). First of all, as the research aims to capture the housing aspirations of young middle-class sharers aged 24 to 35, semi-structured interviews with individual sharers in Amsterdam and Glasgow were conducted. Semi-structured interviews typically entail a series of questions in the general form of an interview schedule, but with the ability to change the sequence or ask further questions dependent on the participant’s answers (Bryman, 2012b). Based on the research methodology employed by Clapham (2005) and Clapham et al. (2014), I conducted these interviews in the form of housing biographies using a standard interview schedule. They generally started with open-ended about the past such as participants’ socioeconomic background, the process of leaving the parental home, and their education and career developments. In the second part, I touched upon their current housing situation, the financial means they are receiving, their indebtedness, and their ability to save up. Finally, the third part of the interviews alluded to the participants’ expectations of their future employment and housing career, their ideal tenure type and the economic means they would need for it. Next, as the research builds on the interconnections between structure and agency, my thesis also offers a comprehensive understanding of the local housing and welfare context shaping the economic realities of the individual-level aspirations. As such, a descriptive statistical analysis of each city’s context is provided using statistical data from reports by governments and banks, as well as databases such as Onderzoek, Informatie en Statistiek [OIS] for the case of Amsterdam and statistics.gov.scot for the case of Glasgow. Additionally, expert interviews were conducted with key players in both city’s youth markets as well as an analysis of governmental and institutional (policy) documents on each city’s housing market and its accessibility for young people (Bowen, 2009).
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3.4 Sampling
In order to find young people aged 24 to 35 living in shared housing in Amsterdam and Glasgow I used a number of sampling strategies. Most participants were found using snowball sampling, starting with a framework drawn from my own acquaintances and (social media) network (Bryman, 2012). Other sampling methods included distributing flyers and approaching the local workforce in various service sectors I had everyday contact with. In order to select a number of young middle-class sharers with direct reference to the research question, generic purposive sampling was used (Bryman, 2012). The criteria for selecting participants were established a priori instead of contingent on the data collection process (Hood, 2007). First, participants should be aged between 24 and 35. Although age matters less, arguably, in late modern, industrialized societies, I still used a rough estimate to in order to capture the experiences of those in later stages of their, perhaps, delayed adulthood transitions (Heinz, 2009). Second, participants should have passed higher education and have entered their early working lives. For the case of the Netherlands, I defined higher education as a degree in ‘Hoger Beroepsonderwijs’ or ‘Wetenschappelijke Onderwijs’. For the case of Scotland, I defined higher education as third level education at universities or Further Education colleges. Third, participants should be Dutch citizens in the Amsterdam case and UK citizens in the Glasgow case in order to relate the findings to the welfare and housing contexts in which the cases are embedded (Crawford and McKee, 2018b). Finally, participants should be living a type of shared house which involves sharing a semi-dependent housing unit with at least one other who is not a family member (Heath, 2004). In the Netherlands, given the changed legislation for shared housing, the country’s types of shared rental housing are very diverse. As such, the sample consists of young people sharing rental housing with 1 up to 12 other inhabitants, ranging from young people sharing a two-bedroom apartment to more traditional types of communal housing [‘woongroepen’] (see appendix 1). Furthermore, given the complex nature of the country’s rental sector the sample consists if participants renting from private landlords or housing associations (Van
30 Duijne and Ronald, 2018). Among those renting from housing associations, some of them are in rent-regulated housing units, while others are renting in the rent-liberalized sector with a special ‘friends’ contract for young sharers. In the private rental sector, only one participant’s housing unit is rent-regulated, while all other participants are renting in the rent-liberalized segment. On the other hand, In Scotland, all participants are renting in the private rental sector, although some in licensed HMO’s, others in illegal HMO’s, or in types of shared rental housing of less than three inhabitants and/or with a live-in-landlord for which licensing is not necessary (see appendix 2).
3.5 Data gathering process
The data gathering process took place from October 2018 until April 2019. All participants were found using snowball sampling, both informally and through social media platforms such as Facebook, starting from my own personal network. All interviews were conducted face-to-face, either at local catering establishments or at the participants’ home addresses. Eventually, 28 face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with young people living in shared housing, of which 13 in Glasgow and 15 in Amsterdam. An overview of these participants and their characteristics can be found in appendix 1 and 2. In addition, for the both cases, in-depth interviews were conducted with a number of experts specialized in each city’s respective housing market for young people (see table 1). In general, a reasonable level of diversity has been achieved in terms of age, gender, type of employment, employment contract, tenure type, type of shared housing, and degree of intergenerational support (see appendix 1 and 2). However, there are also a number of biases which should be taken into account. For example, while the Amsterdam sample has a relatively equal gender distribution; the Glasgow case consists of 4 women as opposed to 9 men. Furthermore, due to the use of snowball sampling, there is an overrepresentation of participants with a background in cultural studies and social sciences in Amsterdam and participants with a background in engineering and medicine in Glasgow. Finally, ethnic diversity is limited given that only three participants are of non-Western origin.
31
3.5 Data analysis
The data consists of 28 semi-structured interviews with young middle-class sharers, 5 expert interviews, descriptive statistics and institutional (policy) documents. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed producing verbatim qualitative transcripts. Followingly, the empirical data was analysed using a combination of inductive open coding based on the principles of Grounded Theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), and a deductive method of selective coding using predefined codes. According to Strauss and Corbin (2007: 61), open coding is the process of “breaking down, examining, comparing, conceptualising and categorizing data”. As such, in the early stages of the data analysis, qualitative codes were attributed to the data encompassing various dimensions of choice and constrain surrounding shared housing to provide initial analytic handles for conceptualisation (Charmaz, 2006). However, rather than being purely inductive, the data analysis has been altered to fit the realist epistemology of the research. While there is a wide tradition of scholarly work on young people’s changing preferences resulting from post-industrial individualisation (Weston, 1991; Arnett, 1997), analysing them on their own tells us too little about the broader macro-economic processes informing them. In doing so, I move away from
Institution Stakeholder City Date
Glasgow City Council
Senior executive Glasgow 17/12/2018 Letting agent Sales and investment
director
Glasgow 13/02/2019 Municipality of
Amsterdam
Policy advisor housing Amsterdam 19/04/2018 Municipality of
Amsterdam
Policy advisor housing Amsterdam 19/04/2018 Municipality of
Amsterdam
Program manager new housing construction
Amsterdam 19/04/2018
32 Glaser and Strauss (1967) by arguing that there are structural mechanisms causing change which exist largely independent from our knowledge of it – though our descriptions do not (Sayer, 2000, 2006). For the purpose of theory development, a selective coding method was therefore conducted using Bourdieu’s (1977, 1984) predefined conceptualisation of housing aspirations as the result of the interplay between the individual’s subjective preferences and the objective possibilities they have to realize them (see paragraph 3.1). In short, reality is assumed to exist twice: first in objective structures and second in the mental schemas which are adapted to these structures (Bourdieu 1984, 1990, 1991, 1998, 2000, 2005). The addition of expert interviews, quantitative data and policy documents therefore not only improves triangulation, but also serve to highlight the role of the objectivity structures shaping the economic realities in young people’s lives, which are in turn determined by the dominant mode of production in that particular epoch (Harvey, 2006). In short, this analytical approach does not merely provide an understanding of young people’s desires and ambitions but goes further by capturing the objectivity structures shaping their dominant categories of perception. Such an empirically grounded but theoretically informed analysis moves beyond the socially structured “practices” which govern housing aspirations without ignoring the individual’s agency to respond to and challenge economic reality.
4. Housing system reconfiguration
as economic reality
“All my life I had thought that if you worked hard you would be rewarded.
If you worked your ass off, there would be some reward for you. But now I
knew that the reward was just the chance to work your ass off.”
―
Don J. Snyder, The Cliff Walk
In order to understand the housing aspirations of young people in shared housing in Amsterdam and Glasgow, it is imperative to first reflect on the wider housing and welfare context shaping them, for these aspirations would not be the same in vacuum (Crawford and McKee, 2018b). Therefore, this chapter aims to answer the following sub-question: “Which national and urban economic factors underlying a housing system reconfiguration shape young people’s economic realities in Amsterdam and Glasgow?” This chapter does so by providing an outline of the national and urban economic conditions contributing to the constrained position of young people on the Scottish and Dutch housing market. This contribution will help to address “the imbalance which arises from too much of a focus on individual, idealized “preferences”, to the exclusion of a consideration of broader macro-economic processes” (Crawford and McKee, 2018b: 94). Using descriptive data, policy documents and expert interviews, this chapter will thus set the background for the changing economic realities in young people’s lives. In short, following the assumption that both cases have traditionally generous but increasingly hollowed-out welfare states, I will argue that a number of structural factors make that young people in Amsterdam and Glasgow are increasingly stuck between home ownership and social housing due to three economic factors:
§ The flexibilization of life course and employment § The financialization of housing markets
34
Case 1: Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Flexibilization of life course and employment
Young adults in the Netherlands are increasingly prolonging the phase of settling down, such as marrying and childbearing, while they are investing more in extended education and professional careers. From 2000 to 2016, the average age of marriage in the Netherlands increased from 31.0 for men and 28.5 for women to 33.5 for men and 31.0 for women (CBS, 2016). In addition, the average age when women deliver their first child has grown from 24.3 in 1970 to 29.8 in 2017 (CBS, 2018). At the same time, the share of highly-educated young adults aged 25 to 35 in the Netherland’s total work force has steadily been increasing since 2006 (see figure 2). Nowadays, more than half of the young adults in the work force is highly educated. Particularly Amsterdam attract many highly educated and upwardly mobile young adults, partly due to its education institutions and opportunity-rich labour markets (Hochstenbach, 2018). Consequently, over the past ten years, the city has had a positive net migratory balance. The influx of young adults between 18 and 34, in particular, is the largest compared to any other age group, representing a share of just over 30% in 2017 (Hylkema et al., 2018). However, as Amsterdam continues to be a magnet for young people in search of education and work opportunities, the estimated housing scarcity among this group has been projected between 8,800 and 22,000 independent housing units (Municipality of Amsterdam, 2018). According to the Municipality of Amsterdam (2015), young and highly-educated people are increasingly struggling to meet the investment requirements attached to home ownership. One the one hand, this is related to the fact that many young people simply do not desire residential stability, on the other hand, young people are increasingly flexibly employed. Figure 3 shows a steady increase in the absolute number of 25 to 35-year-olds in flexible employment in the Netherlands. Furthermore, following the abolishment of student grants in 2013, young people’s student debt is predicted to increase up to €9,000 (CPB, 2013). Not only will this hamper their ability to save up and leverage equity in
35 their early working lives, it also poses barriers when applying for mortgage finance (Hochstenbach and Boterman, 2017). Consequently, both the affordability as well as the accessibility of living in an ‘escalator city’ such as Amsterdam – a launching site for young people and newcomers to find educational opportunities, jobs, and happiness – is argued to be increasingly constrained (Aalbers et al., 2018).
Figure 3. Young people aged 25 to 35 in the work force by education level*
Source: author, based on CBS, 2019
*Higher education is defined as HBO and WO, middle education is defined as MBO, and lower education is defined as elementary or secondary education
36
The financialization of housing markets
This is partly due to the paradoxical relationship between the flexibilization of life course and employment and the financialization of housing. Until the late 2000’s, home ownership in the Netherlands was a relatively accessible option, with banks offering an attractive mortgage rate reduction plan [‘hypotheekrenteaftrek’]. As a result, not only did the total share of home owners increase from 10% in 1992 to 30% in 2018 (see figure 4), it also fuelled continuously rising house prices. However, since the GFC, access to mortgage credit has been tightened (Aalbers et al., 2018). Consequently, not Figure 3. Absolute number of employee contracts among 25 to 35-year-olds in the Netherlands, 2003-2016
37 only stricter mortgage-lending criteria, but the lowering of maximum available mortgage credit (loan-to-value ratios), compulsory annuity loan repayment and high deposit-requirements are rendering home ownership especially elusive for first-time-buyers (Nederlandse Vereniging van Banken, 2017). Since then, the city’s housing market has recovered relatively well while mortgage access is still constrained. For example, in 2017, average house prices in Amsterdam topped €400,000, representing a €120,000 increase in two years, leading to a lack of affordable owner-occupied housing up to €275,000 (Hekwolter et al., 2017; Hochstenbach, 2017). Furthermore, according to a report by De Nederlandsche Bank, about 58% of properties are now sold over market value (Hekwolter et al., 2017). Altogether, these developments have led to a situation in which aspirational home owners do not only have to bring in large sums of private equity to meet the deposit
Figure 4. Housing stock by tenure in Amsterdam, 1992-2018 Source: author, based on OIS Amsterdam, 2019
38 requirements but also to be able to pay over market value (NVB, 2017). Figure 5 shows how the amount of private equity used for first-time purchase is shifting towards €10,000 to €20,000, while the overall share of first-time buyers decreased by 9,4% over 2018 (HDN, 2018). In line with Forrest and Hirayama (2015), these findings suggest that the financialization of housing, as indicated by the growing role of private equity and the investment function of housing, is increasingly determining young people’s stake in the city’s housing stock. Yet, according to HDN (2018) young people in the Netherlands continue to aspire becoming a property owner, especially in dense urban areas. This is reflected in conversations with a policy advisor at the
Figure 5. Amount of private equity used by first-time buyers in the Netherlands in 2017 and 2018
39 Municipality of Amsterdam who states that “there are a lot of single people moving into the city, so you start to wonder who our housing stock belongs to. As a young working person, you just want to have accommodation for a reasonable price. It is clearly a political choice as well.”
The hollowing-out of welfare states and privatization of
housing
Besides the financialization of home ownership, the rented segment of the housing stock is growing increasingly inaccessible for young people as well. For a long time, the Dutch rental market could be seen as unitary rental market in which social and private sectors directly compete and households were relatively free to choose between them without having to give in on price or quality (Van Duijne and Ronald, 2018). In Amsterdam, the social housing sector comprises of dwellings with rents below €711 per month based the point-scoring system for rent-regulated dwellings (Hochstenbach and Ronald, 2018). An important distinction in the Dutch rental market is therefore not necessarily whether a dwelling is publicly or privately owned, but whether it is rent regulated or rent liberalized – with freely determinable rents and accessibility. Due to the privatization of social housing stock and the promotion of home ownership, the city’s social housing stock has been steadily declining since 2002, marking a 53% share of the total stock in 2018 (see figure 4). Despite the prioritization of low-income groups with a gross annual income below €38,035, the average waiting time has increased and now averages 14 years (Hochstenbach, 2019). As such, not only because of the continued normalization of property ownership, but also following the hollowing-out of welfare benefits and subsidies, Vlak et al. (2017) argue that young people are increasingly diverging to the private rental sector. While the Dutch PRS was long in decline due to the promotion of home ownership, it has been growing again since the GFC, mostly in the rent-liberalized segment (see figure 4) (Hochstenbach, 2019). Following high demand, this segment is proving particularly profitable for private investors and small companies, thus contributing 34,4% to the growth of the city’s PRS (Aalbers et al., 2018). As a
40 result, between 2012 and 2017, Amsterdam’s private rental sector increased by 16,7% (see figure 4). Yet, despite these developments, supply does not keep up and rent prices in the liberalized segment of the rental market have been rapidly rising. For example, the average price per square meter for dwellings in the liberalized segment of Amsterdam’s housing market increased from €16,32 in 2010 to €23,28 in 2019, which is an increase of almost 43% (Pararius, 2019). Furthermore, given the fact that the Dutch housing system tends to supply either regulated housing or incentivize home ownership, young people are stuck in a growing divide (Aalbers et al., 2018; Hochstenbach and Ronald, 2018). “You can tell the difficulty of this situation by the waiting lists for social housing. The liberalized rental market is unaffordable and they [young people] are not able to buy yet” (Policy advisor housing, see table 1).
Case 2: Glasgow, Scotland
Flexibilization of life course and employment
Similar to the Netherlands, stable housing careers, including predictable moves into home ownership, are increasingly less common among young people aged up to 35 in Scotland (Scottish Government, 2017a). Especially the GFC has disproportionally affected employment security among young adults in Scotland, as employment rates among young people decreased between 2008 and 2014 but remained relatively stable among older age groups (Scottish Government, 2017a). Additionally, self-employment has increased by 25% since 2007, and insecure forms of employment such as zero hours’ contracts have increased from a 1.8% share of the workforce in 2013 to 2.2% in 2015 (Scottish Government, 2017a). While instability and flexibility are somewhat expected for this age group, with younger households being more likely to face financial insecurity, lack savings and have accumulated lower wealth, “there is evidence that wealth has been distributed away from younger people in the UK, and that a reduction in home ownership among young people is key to this” (Scottish Government, 2017a: 1). A senior
41 executive at the Glasgow City Council recognizes these developments: “Job insecurity or getting a fixed income contract is definitely one factor, it is also related to a delay in the purchase of a house. And also, unless you're very fortunate, most people have debt nowadays, so their ability to save up has changed. That is definitely a factor in pushing up the age of first-time buying.” Furthermore, according to the sales and investment director at one of Glasgow’s biggest letting agents, young people’s inability to save up hampers their ability to meet the deposit requirements: “getting a deposit to purchase is your biggest hurdle and hence the reason why a lot of people are gonna be stuck in the rental market. They wouldn't be able to get the deposit together.” Yet, despite a decline in stable and secure conditions on the demand side, the supply of affordable and accessible housing is simultaneously contracting.
The financialization of housing markets
From the 1979 onwards, home ownership in Scotland was fuelled by the introduction of the ‘Right to Buy’ policy for public authority tenants across the United Kingdom (Kemp, 2015). As a result, home ownership rates in Scotland increased from less than 40% in 1981 to 63% in 2000 (Scottish Government, 2017b). However, since then, and especially since the GFC, the proportion has fallen again to a percentage of 58%. As shown in figure 6, the share is even considerably lower in Glasgow, marking a 44% share in 2017 (Scottish Government, 2018). In addition to mortgage lenders being reluctant to lend to first-time buyers at high loan-to-value ratios such as in the pre-crisis era, stricter lending rules have come into force and LTV-ratios have flattened around 80% (Balfour, 2018). Nevertheless, house prices are increasing again in Glasgow while available mortgage credit is still relatively tight, highlighting the need for substantial deposit to secure financing (Scottish Government, 2017a). For example, in 2018, the average deposit among first-time-buyers in Glasgow averaged £20,376 (Bank of Scotland, 2019). Perhaps not unsurprisingly, reliance on intergenerational support to provide the necessary
42 private equity is increasing across the United Kingdom, with roughly 40% of first-time buyers relying on financial support from family (Humphrey & Scott 2013). More precisely, in Scotland, the rates of those buying with a mortgage have been in decline since the 2007/08 – marking a 29% share in 2017 – while the rates of those owning outright have been surpassing – marking a 32% share in 2017 (Scottish Government 2018). Besides parental support for first-time purchases, the senior executive at the Glasgow City Council and sales and investment director also argue that there has been an increase in parent purchases altogether. Not only does this mechanism highlight the extremes to which extended parental support reach on competitive housing markets, it is also a way of further pushing up house prices:
Figure 6: Housing stock by tenure, Glasgow 2001-2017 Source: author, based on Statistics.gov.scot 2019
43 “Obviously, the parents are looking for nice accommodation for their children to live in. It's quite wealthy, affluent parents who are basically a bank for their children, so they pay over market value to get something good for their child. And they obviously add value to the property because their own child is living in it, so often times they spend money refurbishing it. At the same time, they have their child's friend pay rent. If it's three times 500 pounds its already 1500 pounds which will more than cover mortgage payments. Then they put the capital away to grow over the next four to five years.”
- Sales & Investment Director (major letting agent in Glasgow)
The upward pressure of private landlordism such as parent purchases on Glasgow’s house prices make it more difficult for first-time-buyers relying on mortgage finance to secure financing similarly. For example, according to Shelter Scotland, it takes almost eight years to save up a 10% deposit for a young person on typical wages saving 10% of their income a month, leaving them “stuck in difficult place” (BBC 2017). Nevertheless, despite having less choice, research suggests young Scots continue to aspire home ownership mainly for its value as financial asset and safety-net for later life (McKee 2015). These developments will have significant repercussions for the bridge between expectation and reality among current generations of young Scottish people (McKee & Soaita 2018).
The hollowing-out of welfare states and privatization of
housing
Besides the financialization of owner-occupied housing, subsidized housing is also in decline. Compared to other cities in the United Kingdom, Glasgow’s social housing sector is traditionally much larger, holding a 35% share in 2017 (see figure 6). This is partly due to the abolishment of the Right to Buy policy in 2014 aiming to protect the city’s remaining social housing stock (Scottish Government, 2017b). Nevertheless, with the growth of home ownership, the social housing sector increasingly prioritizes low-income groups and has been steadily decreasing. Between 2002 and 2016 the social housing stock
44 declined by 10% in Scotland and 12% in Glasgow (Statistics.gov.scot, 2019) meaning that those seeking access to the social housing sector may thus find their aspirations being similarly frustrated. Followingly, over the course of the twenty-first century and particularly since the GFC demand for privately rented solutions has surged (Travillion and Cookson, 2016). Figure 6 shows a rapid increase in the share of privately rented dwellings in Glasgow from only 6% in 2001 to 21% in 2017. Not only has private rental now become the most common tenure among young people in Scotland with approximately 46% of the sector comprising of 16–34-year-olds, it increasingly houses non-students and young families as well (National Records of Scotland 2018; Glasgow City Council, 2017). Figure 7 further emphasizes that, while the PRS in the UK is traditionally a niche market for students, many young people in their late twenties to mid-thirties are now also depending on private rental to meet their housing needs. This growth of the PRS goes alongside increasing mobility as
Figure 7. 25 to 34-year-olds by tenure in Scotland, 2017 Source: author, based on Scottish Household Survey 2017
45 41% of those living in the private rental sector in Scotland in 2016 had only been at their address for less than a year (Scottish Government, 2016). According to the sales and investment director at one of the biggest letting agents in Glasgow “demand for professional lets, such as one- or two-bedroom apartments, is very high. So many people can't get mortgages that they will be renting for a very long time. Demand from privately rented properties is coming mostly from professionals who can't get a mortgage or people who don't know how long they're gonna be in Glasgow. So, the market is very fluid.” Furthermore, due to growing demand for private rental, average rents in Greater Glasgow increased by 7% between 2016 and 2017, thus further constraining the aspirations of those already relying on the private rental sector to meet their housing needs.
Conclusions
To conclude, this chapter has shown how the interplay between the housing market, labour market and welfare regime in Amsterdam and Glasgow have are increasingly constraining young people’s housing chances. Both cities were long able to house people of various backgrounds, including middle-class groups, due to their relatively large social housing sectors. For those aspiring home ownership, low-cost ownership schemes such as mortgage interest tax deduction in the Netherlands and Right to Buy in Scotland coupled with high loan-to-value ratios made home ownership a relatively accessible option. However, following the GFC, the economic conditions fostering these systems have changed while the life courses of young people are increasingly flexible. Both in Amsterdam and Glasgow, the supply of social housing is in decline and home ownership is growing inaccessible due to stricter lending criteria and rising housing prices, particularly for those reliant on flexible work. As a result, for those seeking housing autonomy – be it through independent rental or home ownership – these conditions have generated growing reliance on deregulated rental sectors in both cities, hence the sobriquet ‘Generation Rent’
