Geographies of exclusion: Seaside towns and Houses in Multiple Occupancy

Abstract

This paper has two intentions. The first is to focus on seaside towns as sites of social exclusion and to contribute to the development of a ‘seaside scholarship’, provoking scholars of poverty and exclusion to engage more critically with seaside locales beyond rural/urban binaries. As this paper demonstrates, many seaside towns face problems associated with both rural and urban areas and therefore a more place-based approach to geographical studies of poverty and exclusion is needed. The second intention of this paper is to explore further how problems associated with traditionally ‘rural’ areas such as remoteness, seasonal employment and a labour market which potentially reinforces gender divisions are often held in tension in seaside towns with traditionally more ‘urban’ concerns such as the quality of privately rented housing, or more specifically Houses in Multiple Occupancy (HMOs). This paper argues that HMOs are a fundamental factor for the particular nuance of exclusion in many seaside towns due to their potential to attract individuals in receipt of Housing Benefit (HB). By attracting HB claimants into seaside towns HMOs indirectly affect those individuals’ opportunities to find and sustain long-term employment and access services in ways which mimic those evidenced in rural areas. To support these claims a case study from the town of Ilfracombe, north Devon is used, drawing from a large qualitative data set which includes interviews with local authority officers, community workers and HMO residents.