Navigating the housing crisis: A comparison of international students and other newcomers in a mid-sized Canadian city

This article investigates the housing experiences of international students in comparison to other newcomers in the mid-sized Canadian city of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, with a focus on how they navigate housing crises. Drawing on recent literature on housing justice, a quantitative survey of 188 participants, and 30 qualitative interviews, the findings reveal that international students and other newcomers are at different stages of their housing careers, have different needs and goals, and are experiencing the affordability crisis differently. Housing discrimination is a pressing concern, especially for international students who are subjected to intersectional prejudice, exploitation by landlords, and amplified challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The article argues for inclusive housing and immigration policies that acknowledge international students as part of the Canadian housing market and ensure their rights to housing.     

Housing Developments in Moscow in the 1990s

Ownership of an apartment is fast becoming something that most Muscovites will have in common. The privatization of the housing stock has resulted in a highly speculative housing market, and the buying and selling of apartments is slowly altering the social geography of Moscow. The construction of Western-style housing catering to the newly wealthy, while still very limited, is nonetheless symbolic of the changes under way. Control over property, that is, land and buildings, is a highly contentious political issue in Russia. Land represents wealth, and in Moscow there is strong political resistance to allowing private ownership of it. This paper examines some of dimensions of the privatization of housing in particular, and the private and public sector interests involved in property development in general. 7 figures, 2 tables, 16 references.     

A Housing Crisis,a Failed Law,and a Property Conflict: The US Urban Speculation Tax

In 1978 the local government in the District of Columbia approved a measure to tax up to 70% of the profits made on residential speculation. The tax was the first of its kind in the USA. But, it was quickly overturned and deemed by supporters and opponents a failure. Based on 10 months of archival research and interviews in Washington, DC, this paper examines how property rights became a narrative barrier that tax supporters could not overcome. By narrative barrier, I mean the set of rules that shaped how speculation was discussed. Tax supporters did not publicly convey a counter‐hegemonic vision of how tenure security and economic wealth could be achieved for black residents through means other than private ownership and real estate investment. This paper contributes to understandings of housing markets, housing crises, and intersections between housing justice and property rights.     

New immigrant settlement in a mid-sized city: a case study of housing barriers and coping strategies in Kelowna, British Columbia

The successful integration of immigrants into a new society is based on their attainment of several basic needs, including access to adequate, suitable and affordable housing. While this has long been a concern in Canadian cities, such as Vancouver, Toronto, and Montréal, it is also increasingly an issue in growing mid-sized cities such as Kelowna, in the interior of British Columbia. While Kelowna's real estate market is one of the most expensive in the country, there is little published data or literature on the housing experiences of immigrants in the city. This study examines the housing experiences and stresses of a small group of immigrants in Kelowna's rental housing market. This study uses data from five focus groups with 34 new immigrants and 20 interviews with key informants, conducted in Kelowna in summer 2008. The evidence indicates that for this group of immigrant newcomers, the housing search process in Kelowna's rental housing market met with significant barriers in locating affordable rental housing. Of these barriers, the most commonly cited were: (a) high housing costs; (b) lack of reliable housing information, including lack of access to organizations that provide housing help (government or not); and (c) prejudice by landlords based on the immigrants' ethnic and racial background.
This study points to the need for more comparative studies on the housing experiences of immigrants in mid-sized cities in Canada to better understand which groups of immigrants are more successful than others in finding affordable housing in these mid-sized cities, and why.     

From Grenfell Tower to the Home Front: Unsettling Property Norms Using a Genealogical Approach

The Grenfell fire was symbolic of an unequal urban landscape closely tied to material and aesthetic norms around property ownership and entitlement. The aim of this paper is to unsettle these norms by advancing a novel genealogical approach. Through systematic review of government archives seldom studied by property researchers, historical comparisons are mobilised to challenge the taken‐for‐granted way in which we approach property and ownership today. It is shown how, in the face of a comparable housing crisis and direct action, both Churchill's and Atlee's post‐war governments temporarily overlooked property norms by extending wartime requisitioning powers. Going further, however, the paper argues that by revisiting history, we can also rediscover a legacy of “forced entry” that might open up political possibilities in the present. By advancing a genealogical approach to ownership, the paper contributes to wider discussions around property norms, concluding that we have before (and can again) enact property differently.     

The Mongol invasions of Europe

ABSTRACT

This article argues that Zionist Christianity emerged in South Africa out of the peasant revolt that occurred in the Boer Republics during and after the South African War. Using the experiences of early Zionist leaders Daniel Nkonyane and Engenas Lekganyane, the article demonstrates the continuity of their theology with the ideology of the ‘Rebellion From Below’ first described by Jeremy Krikler. The early Zionists, like their predecessors, were primarily interested in recreating a world based on communal politics and land ownership – a world without rents, landlords, or white supervision.     

The Land that Disappeared: Forceful Occupation,Disputes and the Negotiation of Landlord Power in a Bangladeshi Bastee

Through the lens of the ‘disappearance’ of a piece of land, this article analyses land relations in a Bangladeshi bastee (slum). The author builds an understanding of the local negotiation of ownership in an area where dakhal (forceful occupation) is the main starting point for the assessment of ownership. The property regime in the bastee emerges out of a web of relationships between different landlords, strongmen, elected officials and (local and national) politicians. These relations are not only crucial for maintaining existing dakhal patterns, but also for guaranteeing land sales, negotiating and settling disputes and, in the final instance, for negotiating power relations in the bastee itself.     

The Conservatives' Search for a Middle Way in Housing, 1951-64

The Conservatives returned to power in 1951, determined to createa property-owning democracy by freeing the market in land andhousing. But freeing the market proved to be no panacea andaroused much criticism. Most important, public housing continuedto expand as the major alternative to private home ownership,in part because the supply of private rented housing declinedprecipitously. Dismayed at this situation, the Conservativesbecame increasingly concerned to find an affordable alternativeto the continued expansion of public housing. To achieve thisgoal, they attempted to foster novel types of private ownershipin the form of societies that could provide either some sortof co-operative housing or rental housing at cost. Ultimately,these attempts to create a middle way in housing failed becausethey ignored the realities of the property market.     

Keeping the Network out of view: Mining,Distinctions and Exclusion in Melanesia

ABSTRACT This paper examines the ‘property effects’ surrounding competition over access to mining benefits in Papua New Guinea. Under conditions of rapid social change engendered by large scale resource extraction, Lihirian islanders have increasingly recalibrated their social networks, manifest through shifting notions of sociality and obligation, and ownership strategies that seek to limit other people's claims to wealth. These local changes are paralleled by larger and more paradoxical processes: although the state uses the mining project to consolidate itself, Lihirians have consistently challenged the state through their attempts to appropriate the mine for their own ends. By keeping the multiple layers of their social networks out of view, Lihirians deny the connections that can provide others with access to benefits. In considering the strategic responses to the inequalities, discontents and inconsistencies of life in modern Papua New Guinea, it becomes apparent that questions of property are simultaneously questions about identity and belonging.     

乡居·镇居·城居——清末民国江南地主日常活动社会和空间范围的变迁

生活环境深刻地影响着人们的行为。清末开始的地主由乡村向城镇的迁移是一个较为普遍的历史现象 ,居住环境的改变对地主日常生活的影响不仅反映在社会活动的内容和交往关系上 ,而且反映在社会活动的空间范围上。这两方面的影响表现在江南离乡地主身上的结果便是个性束缚的减弱和个人能力的增加。     

LEASE DEFAULTS AND THE EFFICIENT MITIGATION OF DAMAGES*

ABSTRACT The traditional law of leases imposed no duty on landlords to mitigate damages in the event of tenant breach, whereas the modern law of leases does. An economic model of leases, in which absentee tenants may or may not intend to breach, shows that the traditional rule promotes tenant investment in the property by discouraging landlord entry. In contrast, the modern rule prevents the property from being left idle by encouraging landlords to enter and re‐let abandoned property. The model reflects the historic use of the traditional rule for agricultural leases, where absentee use was valuable, and the emergence of the modern rule for residential leases, where the primary use entails continuous occupation.     

Heritage conservation in Alexandria,Egypt: managing tensions between ownership and legislation

This paper examines the realities facing the heritage conservation system in Egypt, with a special focus on the relationship between heritage conservation legislation and the ownership of listed buildings in Alexandria. The objective of this paper is to identify the reasons for owners’ objections to the heritage conservation law and their motivation to exclude their properties from the heritage list. The ways in which owners have made use of gaps found in the legislation to exclude their buildings from the list were also examined. Furthermore, channels of communication between heritage conservation authorities and landlords, the exclusion of owners in the decision-making process, the legal aspects of heritage legislation and the assessment of their success are explored.     

Octavia Hill Women Housing Managers in South Africa: femininity and urban government

Women trained in a system of housing management developed by Octavia Hill in Victorian England were employed in South Africa's Coloured and European townships from the mid-1930s. They were also involved in training South African women in this tradition which emphasized the mutual responsibilities of landlords and tenants and rested upon the formation of trusting relationships or friendships between women housing managers and the tenants. Octavia Hill's followers worked hard to make a place for women in the field of housing management and claimed that their femininity gave them special expertise in this area, especially in terms of training housewives in domestic skills and in building up the relations of trust required by Octavia Hill's system. This paper describes the implementation of this system of management in South Africa and considers the implications of the role of women in housing management for our thinking about the gendered character of the state. My main argument is that rather than being a precedent for the value of incorporating femininity and women into the state, Octavia Hill's management tradition had already incorporated both historically masculine and historically feminine practices. In so far as she and her followers (and perhaps other female reformers) played a role in shaping the nature of the state, then it could be argued the state reflected a mediation of masculinity and femininity rather than a dominant masculinity and a subordinated or segregated femininity.     

Private rental investment and socio-spatial disadvantage in Sydney,Australia

This article unpacks the connection between a growing cohort of small-scale but purposive property investors and urban socio-spatial restructuring. We analyse private rental housing as a tenure share to demonstrate its spatial correlation with the suburbanisation of socio-economic disadvantage in Sydney, Australia, between 1991 and 2016. Then, we show how investors drive this emerging pattern by reference to the geography of property owners’ stated investment objectives—low capital outlay, rental yields, and capital growth prospects. We contend that the link between their small-scale activities and the city’s changing socio-spatial structure is an overlooked consequence of private rental sector (PRS) housing financialisation. Importantly, our focus on behaviours exhibited by small-scale rental property owners in PRS financialisation transcends existing analyses that have concentrated on corporate entity activity in this space. That focus also contrasts with framings of private rental growth as a residual outcome of developments elsewhere in the housing market. Such work is significant because it demonstrates the impacts of real estate investment on urban form.     

Housing tenure and social classes in Kingston Ontario 1881–1901

Housing once again became the subject of political struggles and debates in many countries in the late nineteenth century. It is argued that these struggles may best be understood within the frame of reference of Marxist theory and, in particular, an interpretation of the significance of housing in terms of the production of wage labour as a class relation. From this perspective, attention is directed to the changing relationship between housing tenure and social class. Unfortunately, very little is known about this relationship over the period in question. We lack information on trends in home-ownership in particular and domestic property ownership in general. Furthermore, we lack information on the changing tenure characteristics of the urban populations of the time in relation to their developing class structure. This lack is especially apparent for Canada. On these questions we present evidence from Kingston, Ontario. We note a decline in homeownership which was experienced by all classes. In particular, however, we note a dramatic increase in absentee (as opposed to resident) landlordism. The origins and political effects of these trends may be understood in terms of the particular character of Kingston in the period. Unfortunately, however, it is impossible to define adequately this uniqueness in the absence of comparable research on other American and Canadian cities of the day. We conclude with a set of questions for future research.     

Unpacking Social Exclusion in Western Sydney: Exploring the Role of Place and Tenure

Over the past decade social exclusion has increasingly been positioned at the forefront of political, academic and lay discourse as the cause of disadvantage. While the definition, measurement and solutions to social exclusion remain open to debate, housing has progressively been positioned as a central variable creating neighbourhoods of exclusion. Much of this debate has positioned areas of public housing as being the most disadvantaged and socially excluded neighbourhoods. However, the multidimensionality of social exclusion brings into question the simple identification of areas of public housing as being the most excluded. By exploring six dimensions of exclusion (neighbourhood, social and civic engagement, access, crime and security, community identity and economic disadvantage) we explore the differences between areas dominated by public housing and those characterised by private market housing in terms of their scores on each of these individual dimensions of exclusion. We find that it is the experience of households with multiple dimensions of exclusion, especially locational and economic disadvantage, that differentiate areas of public housing from private housing locations.     

The benevolent proprietor and the property law: A British‐Indian dilemma

British Indian revenue policy determined British‐Indian property law. ft was essential to establish a class of landed proprietors, entitled by law to collect rents from their tenants, from which in turn government could legally assess its revenue demand. Revenue was principally settled with the zamindars, who had had rights to a share in agricultural produce which carried a duty to meet government's revenue demand recognised by the Mughal government. The zamindars were redefined unequivocally as landlords by the British‐Indian property law. Their estates were assigned on the basis of existing records and were composed for the most part of disparate shares in villages. Such estates were essentially not economically viable; the social and domestic circumstances of the zamindars further compromised the management of their estates. Government intended that the landlords should become progressive farmers, but conditions, as much a product of legal enactment as of economic reality, frustrated that aim. The history of the nineteenth century administration of British India illustrates the dilemma of government, and the conflict between conservatism in the rural sphere and the pursuit of progressive policies. The radical reform of the zamindars’ estates, namely the drastic curtailments which took place under the zamindari abolition statutes under the Congress government's programme for land reform, has paradoxically achieved for independent India that which the government of British India struggled throughout a century and a half to achieve: the creation of the progressive proprietor.     

TWO-EARNER FAMILIES IN THE HOUSING MARKET

The 1970's has been a period in which three trends have coincided: housing prices have been escalating, wives have continued to enter the labor force, and legislation prohibiting discrimination in mortgage markets on the basis of sex and marital status has been enacted. In this paper, we examine the role of the two-earner family–one in which both husband and wife work–in the housing market of the 1970's, and the interrelation of this household type with other factors shaping the current high demand for housing. We also speculate on the role of the two-earner family in the housing market of the 1980's. We conclude that two-earner families are in a position to increase their housing outlays in the future, that the continued growth in the number of two-earner families will add to future housing demand, but that many two-earner families may be divorced couples of the future. This suggests that, while there will be a strong impact on single-family home demand, there will also be some restructuring of demand toward rental housing and cooperative/condominium ownership.     

试析清末民初江南地主的“租栈”经营

在20世纪前期剧烈的社会政治变迁中,绅士地主仍然作为权力机构的主体活动于乡村,只是此时的绅士构成并非局限于功名、身份,其来源和出身呈多元化趋势,其阶层构成要素有所变异,然而绅士之传统功能和角色却并无质的变化,仍具有代表地主权力机构性特征。但伴随社会经济的发展,中国农民摆脱绅士地主和地方权力控制斗争加强,抗租事件随之增多,由于中国地主制度在20世纪仍具有较强的生命力和奠基力,活动空间较大,故更愿意选择类似于＂租栈＂的专门机构进行收租,进而导致了城居地主和乡民之间本已动摇的联系变得更加松散,而得以维持其统治的只有＂租栈＂制度。     

THE EFFECT OF PROPERTY TAX RATE DIFFERENTIALS ON SINGLE-FAMILY HOUSING STARTS IN WISCONSIN, 1978–1989*

ABSTRACT. A pooled cross-section time-series approach is used to test the hypothesis that differences in property tax rates between and across regions exert an excise-tax impact on housing starts. Synthesizing the research regarding property tax incidence on housing markets and residential location with that of regional housing studies, an empirical model that allows for inter- and intraregional influences on housing starts is developed. Using county data from Wisconsin over a twelve-year span, I find that property tax rate differentials have a negative effect on the construction of single-family houses.