One hypothesis is that, in Sweden, the elderly today are more willing to change residence to accommodate for changing lifestyles and poorer health than in earlier generations. If so, the elderly will change their type of tenure from owner occupation to tenant co-operative or rental housing, which includes more services for residents. The aim of this study is to discover if elderly people move to apartments after leaving single-family housing that they own. Mobility patterns of those born in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s are analysed to indetify characteristics of satyers and movers, and to determine to what extent the elderly move to rental and tenant co-operative apartments. The analysis is cross-sectional using a register database comprising the Swedish population. Moves were followed between 2001 and 2006. The majority remained in their current dwelling but almost one-quarter moved. Of those, a smaller number moved from owner-occupied housing to a tenant co-operative or rental apartment.

One hypothesis is that, in Sweden, the elderly today are more willing to change residence to accommodate for changing lifestyles and poorer health than in earlier generations. If so, the elderly will change their type of tenure from owner occupation to tenant co-operative or rental housing, which includes more services for residents. The aim of this study is to discover if elderly people move to apartments after leaving single-family housing that they own. Mobility patterns of those born in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s are analysed to identify characteristics of stayers and movers, and to determine to what extent the elderly move to rental and tenant cooperative apartments. The analysis is cross-sectional using a register database comprising the Swedish population. Moves were followed between 2001 and 2006. The majority remained in their current dwelling but almost one-quarter moved. Of those, a smaller number moved from owner-occupied housing to a tenant co-operative or rental apartment.

The paper discusses the notion that, in research on elderly immigrant housing, it is not enough to delineate the residential geography of different elderly immigrant groups or to study the economic and social reasons for their segregated habitations and exclusiveness. It is also necessary to understand, in the spatial context, the degree of integration and the differences between groups. In explaining these differences, consideration should be given to each elderly immigrant group's own value system, norms and preferences. It is argued that one necessary task in this endeavour is to gain knowledge about different elderly immigrant groups' understandings of what a home symbolises - what home means to them in the context of their particular ways of thinking and culture. From this point of view, the paper concludes that, when investigating the meaning of 'home' among elderly immigrants, an integrative theoretical approach based on an experiential perspective and a phenomenological and developmental perspective are deemed appropriate to be adopted.

This paper presents the first study to investigate ethnic differential treatment in public housing through a correspondence test field experiment. The experiment involved sending inquiries from fictitious couples with Swedish or Arabic names to all public housing companies in Sweden. Four outcomes were examined: whether the public housing companies responded to the inquiries, whether they initiated their response with a greeting, whether they had a priority system in place, and whether they provided information about problematic neighborhoods. The findings revealed disparities in the treatment of the couples. The Swedish couple received greetings and information about problematic neighborhoods at a greater rate than the Arab couple. This study contributes to existing literature on ethnic differences in the housing market by providing evidence of differential treatment within the public housing sector. Additionally, it explores the content and quality of public housing companies' responses, offering valuable insights for policymakers and housing professionals in designing interventions to promote equality and counteract differential treatment.

To date, few studies have adopted a particular focus on the role of housing tenure when analysing ethnic and socioeconomic differences in out-mobility from poor neighbourhoods. This study contributes to filling this gap. The paper uses a full population data set covering every individual residing in the capital region of Sweden during the period 2006-2008. The findings indicate that those with foreign background are dependent on housing wealth and higher income to be able to leave poor neighbourhoods when moving, while native Swedes seem to be less constrained by income. The results warrant efforts to broaden mix policy beyond the discussion on housing tenure if policy-makers want to counteract the ethnic and socioeconomic imbalances of residential mobility upholding segregation.

We examine the 'overlap' or to which degree tenure form patterns are similar to socio-economic segregation patterns. The issue has been discussed concerning mixing policies; does mixing of tenure hinder socio-economic segregation? If mixing tenure is to be an effective policy against segregation, the overlap has to be understood. Using Swedish register data, we cross tenure-type landscapes with patterns of high/mixed/low-income and with European/non-European/Swedish-born. To what degree is there overlap among tenure, income and country of birth? Is the overlap related to geographical scale and polarization? Is the overlap of tenure forms with socio-economic characteristics consistent across regions? We find strong overlap of large-scale cooperative tenure landscapes with very high incomes as well as with Swedish-born. Small-scale tenure-landscapes provide mixing opportunities for incomes wherever they are located; however, these landscapes have a small non-Swedish-born population nearby. Some tenure-type landscapes vary in characteristics depending on location; e.g. public rental concentrated areas are high-income in urban cores but low-income in urban peripheries.

We examine the ‘overlap’ or to which degree tenure form patterns are similar to socio-economic segregation patterns. The issue has been discussed concerning mixing policies; does mixing of tenure hinder socio-economic segregation? If mixing tenure is to be an effective policy against segregation, the overlap has to be understood. Using Swedish register data, we cross tenure-type landscapes with patterns of high/mixed/low-income and with European/non-European/Swedish-born. To what degree is there overlap among tenure, income and country of birth? Is the overlap related to geographical scale and polarization? Is the overlap of tenure forms with socio-economic characteristics consistent across regions? We find strong overlap of large-scale cooperative tenure landscapes with very high incomes as well as with Swedish-born. Small-scale tenure-landscapes provide mixing opportunities for incomes wherever they are located; however, these landscapes have a small non-Swedish-born population nearby. Some tenure-type landscapes vary in characteristics depending on location; e.g. public rental concentrated areas are high-income in urban cores but low-income in urban peripheries.

Nordic countries rank high on measures indicating tolerant views on immigrants. Yet, ethnic residential segregation is stated as being a major social problem in these countries. Neighbourhood flight and avoidance behaviour among the native born could be a sign of less tolerant views on minorities, but could of course be restricted to native-born residents in areas of high-ethnic concentration. So far, no research in these countries has explicitly focused on the majority population’s view on segregation, and we know little about how native-born residents in different neighbourhood contexts view ethnic segregation or how own residential experience shapes decisions on staying or leaving; this paper aims to help fill this research lacuna. In a survey targeting 9000 native-born residents in three Nordic capital cities—stratified into neighbourhood movers and stayers and into neighbourhoods having different proportions of non-Nordic-born residents—we answer three questions: do native-born respondents prefer a neighbourhood ethnic mix? Do they see ethnic segregation as a problem? Do they prefer lower, current or higher shares of ethnic minorities in their own neighbourhoods?

The issue of residential segregation has been on the Swedish political agenda since the early 1970s. This paper analyses the background for this interest, presents some basic features of socio-economic and ethnic residential segregation, and discusses some fundamental contextual properties regarding the Swedish welfare state, its institutional set-up and changes in housing and other policies that have affected the conditions for segregation processes. Three more specific anti-segregation policies are also identified and analysed: housing and social mix policy (first initiated in the 1970s); the refugee dispersal policy (initiated in the 1980s); and the area-based urban policy (initiated in the 1990s). Of these three, the last two have a clear ethnic focus while mix policies primarily aim for socio-economic and demographic mix. The analysis shows that none of the policies have managed to affect levels of segregation more than marginally, the reasons being ineffective implementation (the mix policy), failures in the design (the refugee dispersal policy) or conflicting aims inherent in the policy (area-based interventions).

The issue of residential segregation has been on the Swedish political agenda since the early 1970s. This paper analyses the background for this interest, presents some basic features of socio-economic and ethnic residential segregation, and discusses some fundamental contextual properties regarding the Swedish welfare state, its institutional set-up and changes in housing and other policies that have affected the conditions for segregation processes. Three more specific anti-segregation policies are also identified and analysed: housing and social mix policy (first initiated in the 1970s); the refugee dispersal policy (initiated in the 1980s); and the area-based urban policy (initiated in the 1990s). Of these three, the last two have a clear ethnic focus while mix policies primarily aim for socio-economic and demographic mix. The analysis shows that none of the policies have managed to affect levels of segregation more than marginally, the reasons being ineffective implementation (the mix policy), failures in the design (the refugee dispersal policy) or conflicting aims inherent in the policy (area-based interventions).

There is substantial interest among policy makers in both Western Europe and North America in reducing concentrations of disadvantaged households through initiatives to enhance the `social mix' of neighbourhoods. However, there is little consideration or understanding with regard to which mix of household characteristics matters most in influencing the socio-economic outcomes for individual residents. This paper explores the degree to which a wide variety of 1995 neighbourhood conditions in Sweden are statistically related to earnings for all adult metropolitan and non-metropolitan men and women during the 1996-99 period, controlling for a wide variety of personal characteristics. The paper finds that the extremes of the neighbourhood income distribution, operationalized by the percentages of adult males with earnings in the lowest 30th and the highest 30th percentiles, hold greater explanatory power than domains of household mix related to education, ethnicity or housing tenure. Separating the effects of having substantial shares of low and high income neighbours, it is found that it is the presence of the former that means most for the incomes of metropolitan and non-metropolitan men and women, with the largest effects for metropolitan men.

The aim of the study is to investigate if more competition leads to lower rents on the housing market. Data about the rent level for similar apartments in 30 cities in Sweden were available. Three hypotheses were formulated: (H1) Increased 'internal' competition, measured by the market share of the municipal housing company (that dominates the market and is price-leader according to the Swedish system of rent regulation), leads to lower rents. (H2) Increased 'external' competition measured by the price level on the market for single-family owner occupied housing, leads to lower rents. (H3) Lower capital expenditure in the municipal housing company leads to lower rents. The statistical analysis showed a strong correlation between the rent level and the level of external competition, but no relation was found for the level of internal competition and the level of capital expenditure. A possible conclusion is that policies that make it easier for households to leave the rental market are important for increasing the pressure on the firms in the rental sector and reducing rents.

Researchers in the field of housing studies only seldom employ a ‘politics perspective’, analysing the political games and processes of housing provision and the political institutions of relevance to these processes. Instead political aspects are largely discussed either in terms of structural and cultural conditions and constraints on the macro level (‘Structure’ in the title), or as rather descriptive narratives about specific governments, elite actors and institutions, without the theoretical linkage necessary to draw more general conclusions (‘Thatcher’ in the title). This article introduces and develops some basic theoretical elements of a research agenda within housing studies exploring political actors (in a wide sense) and institutions, and allowing middle-range theorising and generalisation. It is discussed how such a perspective can be applied to the field of housing with its political specificities, in particular the central role of markets. Some earlier research of relevance to housing politics is reviewed, and ways forward are suggested.

Several studies have demonstrated the importance of path dependence in housing institutions and policy. So far, however, perspectives of path dependence have not been systematically applied to cooperative housing. This article analyses, in terms of path dependence and change, the historical development of the uniquely large Swedish cooperative sector and its role in the Swedish universal housing regime. The main focus is on three political processes, which are found to be ‘critical junctures’ changing the historical trajectory of the cooperative sector: (1) the introduction of the first Tenant-Ownership Act in 1930, when tenant-ownership was established as a housing tenure; (2) the introduction of the Swedish universal housing regime after WWII, when cooperative housing was granted a central role in housing provision; (3) the deregulation of the cooperative tenure in 1968–1969, which opened the road towards marketization and further expansion. The games between political actors and cooperative leaders and members at these critical junctures and the institutional outcomes are analysed in terms of mechanisms of path dependence. The article concludes with a discussion of the merits and potential problems of applying path dependence analysis to housing regimes in general and to the role of housing cooperatives more particularly.

The aim of this paper is to analyse whether or not differentiated rents reflect differences in neighbourhood quality in housing of similar quality and age in two target cities in Sweden. The system for rent setting in Sweden is partly based on a process of negotiation in which the annual change in actual rents is an outcome of negotiations between the local branch of the Swedish Union of Tenants and local municipal housing companies. One possible outcome of these negotiations could be change to the rental structure in the different neighbourhoods within the municipality. By allowing differences in negotiated rent outcomes in different neighbourhoods, a better relationship of rent level to tenant perception of neighbourhood quality can be achieved. It is the understanding of the authors that in a number of local-housing-market rent negotiations over the last decade, the parties involved have agreed on the need for and have consciously aimed towards making such adjustments. In this paper, regression analysis has been used to analyse data about rent levels for residential units from two cities in Sweden, namely Gothenburg and Lulea. It can be concluded that differentiated rents are indeed present, hence the existing rent-setting system in Sweden can be used to improve the relationship between rental structure and neighbourhood quality.

This paper evaluates the resilience of social rental housing in the UK, Sweden and Denmark. Throughout the OECD, processes of retrenchment and privatization, alongside the growth of the owner-occupied and private rental sectors, have led to nigh universal declines in the size and scope of social rental housing. These processes have not transpired evenly, however. Embracing a historical institutionalist approach, alongside novel data and methodology, this paper assesses the variegated patterns of sectoral decline and resilience in these three northern European countries. We find the Danish, association-based model - with its polycentric governance and multi-level system of financing - to have been the most robustly resilient hitherto. In the UK and Sweden, we observe patterns of decline and evidence that the non-profit and needs-based principles which traditionally underpinned these systems have reached precarious thresholds. Nevertheless, despite manifold retrograde threats and vulnerabilities over the past decades, the social rental sectors in Sweden and the UK have proved surprisingly resilient.

This paper problematises the perception that enhanced competition within the Swedish residential construction sector offers a panacea to rising building costs and deteriorating housing affordability. The paper investigates the relationships between housing production, exchange, and consumption from three perspectives: (i) an historical analysis of the residential construction industry; (ii) elite semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, and (iii) an exploration of state crisis management. Instead of viewing competition within the construction sector as an isolated sphere, we argue that the inherent unevenness within this sector needs to be grasped in combination with broader political-economic developments. We claim that rising productions costs (particularly in the tenant-owner sector) have been fuelled by soaring land prices, and that this situation has provided fertile terrain for rent-seeking throughout the housing supply chain. We conclude that calls for more competition, both in Sweden and further afield, tend to oversimplify the complex issue of housing provision and shroud more fundamental housing system imbalances.

This paper problematises the perception that enhanced competition within the Swedish residential construction sector offers a panacea to rising building costs and deteriorating housing affordability. The paper investigates the relationships between housing production, exchange, and consumption from three perspectives: (i) an historical analysis of the residential construction industry; (ii) elite semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, and (iii) an exploration of state crisis management. Instead of viewing competition within the construction sector as an isolated sphere, we argue that the inherent unevenness within this sector needs to be grasped in combination with broader political-economic developments. We claim that rising productions costs (particularly in the tenant-owner sector) have been fuelled by soaring land prices, and that this situation has provided fertile terrain for rent-seeking throughout the housing supply chain. We conclude that calls for more competition, both in Sweden and further afield, tend to oversimplify the complex issue of housing provision and shroud more fundamental housing system imbalances.

Comparative housing scholars have, for many years now, imported typologies from non-housing spheres to explain housing phenomena. Notably, approaches attempting to account for divergent housing tenure patterns and trends have frequently been organized around typologies based on the assumption that a causal relationship exists between homeownership rates and the type of welfare regime or, more recently, the variety of residential capitalism a country exhibits. While these housing-welfare regime approaches have provided important research tools, we argue that the typologies they generate represent cross-sectional snapshots which offer little enduring cogency. Based on long-run data, we show that the postulated associations between homeownership, welfare and mortgage debt are historically contingent. This paper makes the case for employing historicized typologies, proposing a country-based typology linking historical housing finance system trajectories to urban form and tenure, with regional dimensions. We argue the need for typologies which can accommodate longitudinal, path-dependent dimensions, both within and between countries.

A large number of studies have demonstrated that the proportion of home-owners in a region tend to be positively associated with the unemployment levels in that region. In this paper, we introduce a missing piece of explaining this commonly found pattern. By analysing individual-level population register data on Sweden, we jointly examine the effects of micro- and macro-level home-ownership on individuals’ unemployment. The findings indicate that even though home-owners have a lower probability of being unemployed, there is a penalty for both renters and home-owners on unemployment in regions with high home-ownership rates. Differences in mobility patterns cannot explain this pattern. However, when labour market size is considered, the higher probability of unemployment in high home-owning regions is drastically reduced. This suggests that high home-ownership regions tend to coincide with small labour markets, affecting the job matching process negatively.

A large number of studies have demonstrated that the proportion of home-owners in a region tend to be positively associated with the unemployment levels in that region. In this paper, we introduce a missing piece of explaining this commonly found pattern. By analysing individual-level population register data on Sweden, we jointly examine the effects of micro- and macro-level home-ownership on individuals’ unemployment. The findings indicate that even though home-owners have a lower probability of being unemployed, there is a penalty for both renters and home-owners on unemployment in regions with high home-ownership rates. Differences in mobility patterns cannot explain this pattern. However, when labour market size is considered, the higher probability of unemployment in high home-owning regions is drastically reduced. This suggests that high home-ownership regions tend to coincide with small labour markets, affecting the job matching process negatively.

Using extensive longitudinal register data for more than 80 000 young metropolitan Swedes, this study addresses the effect of a disadvantaged neighbourhood social context on groupings of outcomes that are important for the living conditions of young adults. The overall results show that growing up in a disadvantaged neighbourhood increases the risk of experiencing comparably more unemployment, having less education and receiving more social assistance than similar young people from more affluent neighbourhoods. However, when the estimated effects of neighbourhood are assessed by means of an epidemiological impact measure that takes the prevalence of the risk factor at population level into account; these effects prove to be minimal. We discuss possible drawbacks of placing too much emphasis on policies targeting disadvantaged neighbourhoods versus universal social policy measures.

Inequalities relating to ownership of housing have become a major issue de jour in many Western societies. This article examines how the distribution of homeownership in Sweden relates to two factors widely seen as significant to such inequalities, namely parental tenure status and place of birth. We use longitudinal registry data to examine the bearing of these two factors on individual-level tenure progression since the beginning of the 1990s for persons at different stages of their housing careers. We extend existing understandings of Swedish homeownership patterns by demonstrating that inequalities relating to place of birth and parental tenure intersect with one another in ways that substantially advantage certain subgroups while disadvantaging others, and by demonstrating that experiences of entry into homeownership have in recent years been changing in markedly different ways for these different subgroups. Overall, Swedish homeownership inequalities, far from dissipating, appear to be hardening along existing lines.

Previous research has established the link between individuals' housing characteristics and their childbearing behavior. This study contributes to this literature by examining the association between first, second and third parity transitions and housing tenure and type. The study design distinguishes between owner-occupied apartments, rental apartments and owner-occupied detached houses. This study also uniquely takes into account individual housing histories in relation to later life fertility outcomes. The data used are an extract from Swedish registers covering 25% of the population. Housing information is available from 1986 to 2006, and the study follows four birth cohorts of women who are aged 15-18 when the study starts, until ages 35-38. Descriptive results on housing and childbearing transitions over the life course are complemented by event-history models to model the parity transitions. Women living in detached housing have the highest likelihood of parity transitions, while women living in rental apartments have the lowest likelihood. Although women from different housing backgrounds have similar outcomes in terms of parity and timing, housing of origin is related to housing context during childbearing transitions, and thus, serves as a good insight to individual housing norms and constraints.

Against the heteronormativity of the increasing field of studies around intergenerationalfamily relations within asset-based welfare systems, the paper analyses the housing pathwaysof lesbian and gay young people, focusing on family intergenerational relations and theimplications concerning emotional, private and sexual life. The paper focuses on Greece andItaly, two countries characterized by the so-called ‘Southern European’ model of welfaresystem centred around the family. Given the persistence of homo/lesbophobia, this processpushes lesbian and gay youth to negotiate between housing choices and personal lives inambivalent ways. The housing strategies analysed are regrouped into four categories: i) thereturn to the family house; ii) the dependence on the family of origin to buy or rent; iii)international migration to be more autonomous; iv) the experience of alternative housingmodels, mostly squatting, or sharing (including Airbnb). Our categorization must not beinterpreted as fixed or immutable since people might try different solutions over time.

Both Sweden and the Netherlands had housing systems that include broad models of municipal housing (Sweden) or social housing (Netherlands). These broad models, however, came under discussion due to the competition policy of the European Commission. Financial government support - state aid - for public or social housing is considered to create false competition with commercial landlords. The countries chose different ways out of this problem. The Netherlands choose to direct state aid to a specified target group and had to introduce income limits for dwellings owned by housing associations. Sweden instead chose to change the law regulating municipal housing companies and demands that these companies should act in a businesslike way' and with that aims to create a level playing field. This paper will describe why the two countries chose different options, the development during the first years, and also speculate about the consequences on the longer run and the future role of the public/social housing sector in housing and urban policy.

We investigate the degree to which neighborhood income composition affects the subsequent income of individual male residents, and test the degree to which these effects are characterized by nonlinear, threshold-like relationships. We specify a fixed-effects model to reduce potential bias arising from unmeasured individual characteristics affecting neighborhood selection and income. We employ annual data on 124000 working-age males residing in Stockholm over the 1991-2006 period to estimate parameters for innovative variables measuring the sequence, duration, and intensity of neighborhood exposures. We find that two thresholds-one above 20 per cent and the other above 40 per cent-best describe the strong inverse relationship between consistent exposure to higher percentages of low-income male neighbors and subsequent earnings of individual male residents. We draw implications for potential causal mechanisms behind this relationship and formulating public policy towards places of concentrated disadvantage.

European research attempting to quantify neighbourhood effects has relied almost exclusively on analyses of observational data. No consensus has emerged, perhaps because a variety of statistical procedures have been employed. We investigate this by exploring the degree to which alternative, non-experimental statistical methods yield different estimates of the relationship between neighbourhood income mix and individual work income when applied to the same longitudinal database. We find that results are highly sensitive to the statistical approach employed. Methods controlling for geographic selection bias generally reduce the negative association between low-income neighbours and individual earnings, but substantial differences across models remain. Controlling for both selection and endogeneity produces larger associations and evidence of non-linearity, something that is hidden in models only controlling for selection. All methods suffer shortcomings, so we argue for multi-method investigations to identify robust findings, with instrumental variables and fixed effects on non-mover samples being preferred. In our case, we find a substantial neighbourhood effect, regardless of the method employed.

This paper draws on a case study of newly constructed passivehouses in Sweden and explores how architecture and the materialinfluence everyday life. We suggest the new aesthetics as a potentialtheoretical tool for understanding user experiences oflow-energy housing, an approach that considers how atmospheresare produced and consumed, by whom and by what means. Weapproach passive house designs as the materialisation of environmentalsustainability, facilitating the fulfilment of long-term goalsfor energy efficiency and renewable materials. In our case study,apartment designs involving lofts, timber and extensive glazingsometimes conflicted with the passive house concept once the residentshad settled in their homes. Some designs, for example lofts,failed to facilitate comfortable everyday life, while designs withrenewable materials enhanced a homely atmosphere. We proposeto acknowledge the labour that is required by the residents ofthese buildings to create thermal comfort at home.

Inclusionary housing policies, aiming at creating both affordable housing and mixed neighbourhoods through land use regulation, do not have a long history in Scandinavia. Although Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have traditional welfare state perspectives on equal opportunities and housing, the use of the planning system to implement policy is hesitant. This article outlines the diverse political backgrounds and influences from housing and planning systems that explain this paradox. Further, differences between the housing and planning systems in the three countries are well illustrated by the varying interpretations of inclusionary housing policies. Policy results, in terms of affordability and social mix, play out very differently in the given contexts. The article in this sense adds to the scholarly conversations about barriers and opportunities for IH policy implementation, by contextualizing the conversation with implications from within systems that are relatively homogeneous and aiming for redistribution and equity. This raises questions about when, if, and how IH policy is the appropriate approach.

Throughout Europe, reports of problematic housing situations for young adults have increasingly emerged during the last decades. This paper explores housing experiences among young adults living in a disadvantaged area of Malmö, Sweden, taking the concept of housing inequality as its point of departure. The results suggest how young adults become stuck in between a number of parallel housing markets, leaving them no choice other than the illegal rental market – characterized by steep rents, insecure conditions and precarious quality. The paper advances a multidimensional understanding of housing inequality, as the limited access and poor quality of housing that young adults experience reproduces inequality in a broader sense: It influences potential wealth accumulation, the possibility to lead independent lives, the access to work and education, and thereby, the young adults’ health and well-being.

Sweden does not have gated communities, but this paper argues that processes of gating and the associated consequences are apparent in Sweden, particularly in metropolitan regions. Based on interviews, observations and analysis of previous research, the article identifies the rise of urban gating and gated housing. Urban gating restricts access to previously public land through material gating and results in a loss of the right to use-value of urban land. The rise of a new and exclusive form of gated housing associated with the lifestyles of the mobile middle class, referred to here, as the residential hotel, is spotlighted, prompting questions about the concentration of affluence in already privileged areas and the reinforcing effect of gating on existing patterns of socio-spatial polarization.

There is an emergent field of writings on financialized landlords’ undertaking of apartment renovations as an investment strategy and its effect on housing inequalities. Seldom do these studies contextualize these tendencies within countries’ specific housing policy traditions. Therefore, through a qualitative case study in a neighbourhood in Sweden, this paper aims to uncover how private landlords undertake renovations as an investment strategy and its effect on tenants and, in turn, on the hybrid character of a universal housing system. It finds that renovations enable landlords to extract value from the built environment while tenants experience rising rents, a lack of information, poor property maintenance, and apprehension. Hence, I argue that renovations represent an investment strategy that serves to undermine the traditional social right to housing within a universal housing policy context. The paper thus furthers knowledge on how the situatedness of financialization tendencies entails their translation through and transformation of housing systems. 

There is an emergent field of writings on financialized landlords’ undertaking of apartment renovations as an investment strategy and its effect on housing inequalities. Seldom do these studies contextualize these tendencies within countries’ specific housing policy traditions. Therefore, through a qualitative case study in a neighbourhood in Sweden, this paper aims to uncover how private landlords undertake renovations as an investment strategy and its effect on tenants and, in turn, on the hybrid character of a universal housing system. It finds that renovations enable landlords to extract value from the built environment while tenants experience rising rents, a lack of information, poor property maintenance, and apprehension. Hence, I argue that renovations represent an investment strategy that serves to undermine the traditional social right to housing within a universal housing policy context. The paper thus furthers knowledge on how the situatedness of financialization tendencies entails their translation through and transformation of housing systems.

Neighbourhoods and cities are dynamic; their characteristics and relative positions change over time due to constant moves in and out. However, neighbourhood effect theory and most attempts to quantitatively estimate neighbourhood effects seem to treat neighbourhoods as if they were static. This paper argues that such a view is not only strange but may also result in biased estimates. Four methodological challenges are highlighted that are directly related to mobility: (1) measures of exposure time; (2) neighbourhood change; (3) selection bias; and (4) endogeneity. These are all topics worthy of scholarly interest in themselves, but also challenges that all neighbourhood effect studies must address to convincingly argue that their results are indicative of causal relationships-results of neighbourhood transmission mechanisms-and not just statistical correlations. The paper discusses how and to what extent these challenges have been met by the quantitative neighbourhood effect literature and gives directions to future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]   Copyright of Housing Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.

Through a case study of an immigrant dense working-class neighborhood in Berlin, this article asks how racial and territorial stigmatization figure into state-enabled financialized gentrification and resistance against it. While there is a discussion on territorial stigmatization in the gentrification literature, this debate remains understated in the emerging financialized gentrification literature and rarely connects to race. Debates on resistance to financialization, in turn, while being attuned to the detrimental effects of stigmatization on struggle, pay little attention to the role of the local state as a producer of stigma. In this article I draw together debates on financialization, state-enabled gentrification and racial and territorial stigma to suggest that the local state, through its oppressive classifications and racialized representations of urban space, contributes to preparing the symbolic and material structures on which finance capital is able to flourish, not only by normalizing displacement, but by hampering resistance and demobilizing local working-class communities.

The general housing policy trend in Europe has been towards neoliberalization meaning less state involvement in housing market and less government support for housing production. However, private rental markets are still regulated in many European countries. Here, we classify 33 European countries based on rent regulation system and welfare state regime. There seems to be some but not too much correspondence between the welfare state regime and whether rents are controlled. However, it seems that the role of rent regulation depends on the context and one should take a closer look at specific cases. We look at Nordic welfare states that are similar in that all represent the social democratic welfare model but different in their housing regimes by which we mean the basic principles of how housing provision in the country is organized.

Private rental markets have become increasingly important since the Global Financial Crisis 2008-2009 and rent controls are back on the political agenda. Yet, they have received less attention from housing scholars than homeownership and public housing. This paper presents new data on the development of private tenancy legislation based on a content-coding of rent control, protection of tenants from eviction, and rental housing rationing laws across more than 15 countries and 100 years. This long-run perspective allows for inquiring about the dynamic effects of rent control on the rise of homeownership as the dominant tenure during the twentieth century. We find that both rent regulation and rationing measures were followed by increases of homeownership and decreases of private rentals. We suggest that homeownership was not just produced by generous subsidies or the homeownership dream, but also through the push-effect of regulation crowding out rental units.

The homeownership rate in the United States has continuously been about 20 percentage points higher than that of Germany. This homeownership gap is traced back to before the First World War at the urban level. Existing approaches, relying on socio-economic factors, demographics, culture or housing policy, cannot explain the persistence of these differences in homeownership. This article fills this explanatory gap by making a path-dependence argument: it argues that nineteenth-century urban conditions either began to create the American suburbanized single-family house cities or compact multi-unit-building cities, as in Germany. US cities developed differently from German ones because they lacked feudal shackles, were governed as "private cities" and gave easier access to mortgages and building land. The more historically suburbanized a city, the lower its homeownership rate today. Economic and political reinforcing mechanisms kept the two countries on their paths. The article's contribution is to give a historical and city-focused answer to a standing question in the housing literature.

Smart housing and its consequences for tenants is still a largely absent field in smart city and housing research. Departing from the EU-funded project GrowSmarter, 2015-2019 and a renovation project of a 1960s housing complex in Stockholm, the article investigates tensions around retrofitting older apartment blocks to make them climate smart. The article presents the argument that top-down approaches of EU-funded climate-smart city interventions leave minimal space for different stakeholders to steer the process and limits the tenants' role and influence. Researching the implementation of smart technology in housing renovations and how it ultimately effects tenants' everyday lives, the article adds to previous knowledge of uneven development of climate smart solutions through bringing in the outcomes of housing renovation projects, and how 'actual smart cities' are played out within the housing sector. The article brings together research on climate urbanism, housing studies and smart cities with the purpose to understand the scalar politics of smart implementations and the effects on tenants.

Precarious housing research has become increasingly relevant to previous welfare housing contexts, such as Sweden. In the 1990s, Swedish housing became gradually market-oriented, which induced a shortage of affordable rental housing and increased housing costs in all major cities. This article presents the results from interviews with individuals about their experiences of the unequal housing market in the city of Malmö, Sweden. The article furthers knowledge of the lived experience of housing precariousness in the Global North. The narratives from the housing precariat are analysed through the lens of housing inequalities, and the analysis theoretically adds to ‘research on critical geography of precarity. The article aims to illustrate the consequences of the shift from a general welfare approach of housing to an individualized and neoliberal housing market. In particular, this article adds insights on the gendered and racialized aspects that affect housing precariousness. 

Credit expansion is the trend of households gaining access to more credit. It is correlated with increasing socio-economic heterogeneity of indebted homeowners. Increasing heterogeneity implies that a more diverse span of homeowners is put at risk of foreclosure. This empirical study explores socio-economic heterogeneity in the case of Swedish debtors in foreclosure between 2000 and 2014. Employing individual-level data, the study observes variability over time for socio-economic variables within and between three groups of debtors with mortgage, consumer, and tax debt, respectively. The results indicate that there were trends towards increasing socio-economic heterogeneity within these three groups and that these trends were particularly strong among the group with mortgage debt. For the mortgage debt group, a greater number of socio-economically weak debtors entering foreclosure over time drives increasing heterogeneity. The discussion focuses on the role of increasing scope—access to credit for previously excluded households—and increasing scale—more access to credit generally—in explaining these findings.

Energy is an important social resource on which we depend in our everyday lives; however, energy-related emissions constitute a major environmental burden, so in Sweden a major political goal is to reduce total energy consumption and to use energy more efficiently. To achieve this, users need to transform their behaviour and start reflecting on their energy use. This paper discusses three different methods for visualizing energy use, namely information tools, keeping time diaries, and using the “Power-Are Cord.” Each method has its pros and cons, but combining different methods could prove a useful way to drawing attention to household energy use and the possibilities for energy reduction. By combining the data gained from the different methods, we are more likely to find strategies that are better suited to people’s behaviour.

This study investigates whether housing movements can produce significant outcomes. In particular, I examine the case of the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (PAH), the main organization in the Spanish housing movement between 2009 and 2017. First, I discuss how their demands were framed according to specific contexts of legitimation. Second, I distinguish the nature and scope of the outcomes produced by this movement. My analysis uniquely combines a critical assessment of the PAH’s achievements with its unintended consequences and the significant social, political and economic contexts that help to explain its major outcomes. The global financial crisis, the convergence of the PAH with other anti-neoliberal movements and shifts among the dominant political parties determine the opportunities and constraints of the PAH’s development. Within this environment, the housing movement strategically operates by framing the culprits of the economic crisis in a new manner and by appealing to a broad social base beyond the impoverished mortgage holders. I also include the capacity of the movement’s organization to last, expand and increase its legitimacy as a relevant socio-political outcome. This is explained here through the articulation of the PAH’s agency (organizational form and protest repertoire) within the aforementioned contexts.

Spain was one of the most severely hit countries by the 2008 global financial crisis. More than ten years after, the belated economic recovery has hardly changed the roots of that crisis, especially the financialization of the real estate sector. Remarkably, from 2009 to the present, several grassroots struggles have questioned those roots and demanded solutions to the affordability housing crisis. In this study, we examine two salient cases: the campaign against the Bankia bank and opposition to the international investment fund Blackstone. Both firms forced thousands of home evictions upon financially broken homeowners and tenants, respectively, the latter doing so via sharp rent increases. Here we investigate the claims, protest repertoires and achievements of these housing struggles. Our analysis shows that every type of grassroots’ response was shaped by a distinct process of capital accumulation through the financialization of housing. The first was driven mainly by austerity policies and the second by state-led actions to reignite housing speculation.