The deresidualisation of social housing in England: change in the relative income, employment status and social class of social housing tenants since the 1990s

Abstract

The process of the ‘residualisation’ of social housing, in terms of residents’ income, employment status and class relative to the rest of the population, is one of the best known trends of the housing system in the UK and in many other nations over the past half century. The idea of residualisation and the presumption of its inevitability have become widely accepted, and formed a negative frame for social housing policy. However Pearce and Vine (2014) have shown that in terms of income, the residualisation of social housing in England stopped in 1991. This paper confirms and extends that work using multiple published data sources. These show consistent evidence of convergence over the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s between social tenants and the English national averages in terms of not only income but also employment status and class. Potential explanations, including the restructuring of housing markets, demographic change, and changing labour markets, are briefly explored. Most recently, there some signs that deresidualisation itself may have stopped.