What is the role of social housing in an era of ascendant neoliberalism

1. What is the role of social housing in an era of ascendant neoliberalism? Joe Crawford University of Stirling

2. The only difference between Barlinnie (Glasgow prison) and Castlemilk (Glasgow social housing estate) is, you know that one day you will eventually get out of Barlinnie. (Shelter Client 2007)

3. Housing as welfare Housing is generally treated as one of the four pillars of welfare along with health, social security, and education (Hall, 1952, Timmins, 1996, Brown and Payne, 1994, Glennerster, 1995, Glennerster and Hills, 1998, Gough, 1979, Ginsburg, 1979, Ellison and Pierson, 1998, Alcock, 1996, Hill, 2000).

4. Welfare as administrative enforcement of low wage work “Market values and market incentives are weakest at the bottom of the social order. To buttress weak market controls and ensure the availability of marginal labour, an outcast class – the dependent poor – is created by the relief system. This class, whose members are of no productive use, is not treated with indifference, but with contempt.” (Francis Fox Piven 1971)

5. The dismantling of the Fordist-Keynesian Compact Deregulation of wage work Part time work / flexible working / shift work / fixed term contracts with reduced rights / performance related pay / piecework / home-working / tele-working / two tier wage scales / individualisation of remuneration / individualisation of promotion grids / institutionalisation of temporary work Outsourcing and subcontracting Weakening unions and the fading of employment law

6. Urban Outcasts Mass unemployment, both chronic and persistent, amounting…to deproletarianisation and the diffusion of labour precariousness Relegation to decaying neighbourhoods in which public and private resources diminish Heightened stigmatisation in daily life as well as in public discourse

7. Punishing the Poor (Wacquant 2009) is a study, not of crime and punishment, but of the remaking of the state in an era of hegemonic market ideology. The prison as a core political institution, rather than a mere technical implement for enforcing the law and handling criminals Recognition that ‘workfare’ and ‘prisonfare’ are two integral components of the neoliberal Leviathan, and not passing contradictions to the grand narrative of the alleged advent of small government. Paradox of neoliberal penalty – the state stridently reasserts its responsibility, potency and efficiency in the narrow register of crime management at the very moment when it proclaims and organises its own impotence on the economic front, thereby revitalising the myth of efficient police and the free market (Wacquant 2009).

8. The trade-off between public housing and corrections in the US

9. How does this relate to social housing in the UK? For Wacquant’s assertions to hold any relevance, there would need to be proof of the following in the UK; Constant rise in prison rates. Planned rise in the number of new prisons being built. There would need to be a link between prison(ers) and the social housing sector.