Abstract
Housing policies in many countries have become more market orientated as the role of governments has shifted from the direct supply and funding of non-market housing towards the role of a regulator and facilitator. Central to this development is the notion that providers of social housing have to become more competitive. Arguably, these social housing changes have important implications for the relationship between social and market rented housing and thus the rental market as a whole. Conceptual frameworks that facilitate the understanding of this relationship are sparse commodities. This paper seeks to develop a theoretical framework that can be used to shed light on the conditions, processes, and effects of the new relation between the two rental tenures from an economic competition viewpoint. Therefore, this paper adapts the structure-conduct-performance paradigm to rented housing and discusses the framework’s applicability and value on a theoretical level.
Highlights
If social housing were supplied in completely different locations than private renting, the whole rental market would be less competitive than a market environment in which social and private landlords provided housing in the same neighbourhoods
On a theoretical basis this paper sought to develop a framework that can be used as an analytical tool to shed light on the economic and political realities of competition between the two rental tenures, whether and how they affect the behaviour of the market actors, and what the system outcomes of a competitive relationship are
It was argued that a rounded industrial organization approach as proposed here, modified by some ideas of institutional economics, might be valuable for policy-makers and regulators, since it is able to put very specific housing political instruments, such as housing allowances or rent regulation, into the broader rental housing market context
Summary
The simultaneous developments of changing supply structures and the commercialization of social housing providers across many Western countries (Maclennan and More 1997; Whitehead 2003; Whitehead and Scanlon 2007; Scanlon and Whitehead 2008; Haffner et al 2009) and the increasing involvement of profit-oriented landlords in the provision of rental housing for low-income households (Hulse and Pawson 2010; Retsinas and Belsky 2008; O’Sullivan and De Decker 2007) have arguably led to a convergence of the activities of social and private landlords. This paper seeks to add to the housing literature on the relation between (rental) housing tenures by devising an innovative conceptual framework that can be used as a guiding tool to unfold the complex relationship between social and market rental housing from a competition perspective. The paper gives a more precise account of the idea of competition between social and market rental housing in theory and practice, and how their relation has been contextualized by housing researchers in the past. The applicability of the framework is shown by delineating some market structural and behavioural aspects of inter-tenurial competition in the Netherlands, which results in the presentation of a wider research agenda.
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