Tenure as an Institution

Abstract

Housing tenure is one of the central social institutions in the field of housing. It is the institution through which the consumption of housing is organised in a society. Tenures provide users with rights and burden them with duties concerning housing they are using to satisfy their housing needs. From a comparative perspective a great variety of housing tenures can be found in the world. Moreover, tenures evolve and transform through time. Tenures should be approached from two different perspectives: that of general types and that of specific forms. Types of tenure are constructed by abstracting an ideal type of contrasting housing tenure from the variety of empirically and historically existing tenures. This analytical construct distinguishes only two major tenures: owner-occupation and renting. These differ in terms of the rights of use, control, and disposition provided to the resident. However, in actually existing tenure the differences are qualified by specific institutional arrangements. For example, there are systems of owner-occupation where the right of disposition is much more restricted than for owner-occupiers in general, or there are systems of rental housing where residents are allowed a degree of control over their housing that comes close to what owners usually enjoy. Moreover, there are intermediate forms of tenure that combine characteristics of owner-occupation and renting. These differences from the ideal type exist at the level of forms of tenure, that is, the tenure arrangements that are empirically and historically found in different societies and eras. The ideal type serves as a yardstick to analyse these tenure forms. Over the years, housing researchers have had doubts about the usefulness of perspectives focusing on housing tenure. However, if the limited scope of what tenure concepts refer to is properly taken into account, housing tenure remains an indispensable concept in social analysis of housing.