Housing as a Political Issue: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Housing as a political issue possesses a number of distinctive characteristics. In noncommunist states it is neither entirely a social service nor a commodity provided by free market forces, and countries vary according to the degree to which they favor one form of housing rather than another. The issue of housing has a public character; housing conditions are visible.' But housing is almost always about the private accommodation of individuals and families. Thus housing as a political issue sits, often awkwardly, between publicly generated and articulated demands for high standards of public health and planned, zoned, pleasant communities, on the one hand, and the private desires, needs, and aspirations of individual citizens, on the other. And, unlike the acquisition of medical care or education, the boxes that are homes can be left and exchanged, often for profit. Because of these characteristics housing policy provides a good example of how a state interprets the limits of its welfare function. Because of the private/public nature of housing and because of the way in which almost any action of the state in this area of public policy interferes with somebody's privacy and the possession and use of private property, housing policy provides an illustration of the way in which states perceive the extent of their roles and their proper functions. But public policy is shaped above all else by the policies of the past, and this is particularly true of housing. A society's housing stock is a relatively long-lasting investment and this means that the policies of previous administrations shape contemporary decisionmaking and, indeed, the expectations of consumers and policymakers alike. This moderates the goals of the policymakers and limits innovation. The aims of this article are, therefore, twofold. First, it tries to uncover some similarities and differences between the housing systems of England and New Zealand, indicating how housing becomes political, how it finds a place on the political agenda.2 Second, through this comparative analysis, it seeks to examine the particular characteristics of the political issue of housing. Compared with the United Kingdom, a country of similar land area, New Zealand is sparsely populated, with just over three million inhabitants. Before European colonization it was settled by a Polynesian people, the Maori. Today, approximately 8 percent of the population is at least half Maori, a further 1 percent are recent immigrants from the Pacific islands, and most of the remainder are of British origin. On the surface, then, it might appear that thinly populated New Zealand with its recent housing stock provides an unsuitable comparative coupling with densely