The Future of Home Ownership and the Consequences of Tenure

Abstract

There are questions identified at the beginning of this book concerning the relationship between housing and society. These specifically addressed relations between tenure ideologies and social power relations, housing systems and welfare regimes, and differences in the constitution of home ownership and social structures in different societies. Each chapter has attempted to answer one or more of these questions with the intention of developing empirical and theoretical understanding of the role of housing in societies orientated towards home ownership. I begin making conclusions by summarizing the main arguments and addressing how home ownership should be understood as a dimen-sion of social structure and social relations. This is followed by a more considered appraisal of home ownership ideology, identifying the progress made by the book in developing theory and establishing how policies and discursive housing practices constitute social conditions which appear related to social power relations in different societies. I finally look forward to the implications of potential growth in home ownership across a broader group of societies as well as the emerging features of existing homeowner societies which seem to have been destabilized and socially polarized by their over-dependency on housing markets. Owner-occupied housing systems and practices now appear embedded in socio-economic structures and definitive in how individuals deal with risk and insecurity over the life-course. How governments deal with housing will thus become more central to the evolution of welfare systems and patterns of social development.