Home-Ownership Democracy

Definition

Home-ownership democracy is the political settlement — "the slogan of a 'home owning democracy'" — that made home ownership "the route to security – delivering invulnerability, or at least reducing vulnerability, through bricks and mortar" (Cochrane, Colenutt & Field 2015, p. 569). Instituted in post-1945 England and consolidated through the sale of council houses to sitting tenants (Forrest and Murie, 1988), it ties the suburb to the political order: "From this perspective, and with nostalgic reference back to an imagined golden age, suburbs have been imagined as places of safety away from the threats and challenges of the (cosmopolitan) city, as protected spaces of family houses, gardens and steadily rising property values." The slogan is remarkably durable across parties and decades: campaigning in Swindon during the 2015 UK election, David Cameron revived it once more — "The dream of a property owning democracy is alive and we will help you fulfil it"; "Part of having a good life… is having a home of your own, it's not about assets and appreciating values it is about someone standing here with the keys in their hand thinking this place is mine" (Cameron, 2015, quoted p. 569).

The concept is thus the political-economic register of the home in this wiki: beside Wise's home-as-territorialization (the Deleuzian register), home-ownership democracy is the home as asset, identity and security-state — the arrangement that makes every household a property-interest and thereby pre-forms the growth politics of the suburbs (nimbyism: "having bought into an area, they have a commitment to maintaining their own position"). Its crisis-era fragility is part of the concept: the 2007/08 crash and its aftermath produced "a sharply bifurcated private rental sector" and owner-occupation pressures so extreme that the divisions "became extreme" (Dorling, 2014, cited p. 575) — the "deeply flawed utopia" whose inequalities are "reproduced, within and beyond the region" (p. 574).

The American production register (Wentling 2017). The cluster's fifth source supplies the settlement's factory side: the private-builder alternative that other developed nations' government-sponsored multifamily norms lack — "our abundant land and skilled carpenters gradually fashioned a democratic type of housing stock—housing which was more responsive to how people wanted to live, as opposed to what a central government decided was needed" (Wentling 2017, p. 18). Its engine case is Levittown: "William Levitt's famous assembly line system of delivering houses can be credited with helping to double the prewar homeownership rate from the mid 30% to the mid 60% range" (p. 35) — the settlement built at 17,447-house scale, $7,990 per 700-sq-ft house, and with the settlement's exclusions intact ("Levitt originally refused to sell houses to black buyers," p. 32). The register also states the demand side against the crash-pessimists: "Rest assured, the suburbs are not dead, and the detached house continues to be the most popular choice for most Americans" (p. 5), detached homes over 80% of owned stock and growing. Where Cochrane et al. document the settlement's English fraying and Keil its disciplining ideology, Wentling documents its production apparatus — and its current affordability failure: approvals, impact fees and regulatory barriers have "driven up the cost of delivering a new home in suburban settings to beyond the reach of entry-level buyers" (p. 252). See housing, suburbanism, real-existing-suburbia.

This page requires fuller treatment — created at the first ingest of the suburbanism batch.

Key Thinkers

• cochrane-allan, colenutt-bob, field-martin — the concept's analysts: home ownership as security-slogan, settlement, and the engine of suburban growth politics
• David Cameron (not paged — quoted source, not a theorist) — the 2015 revival: "The dream of a property owning democracy is alive"
• Forrest & Murie (not yet paged — see log) — the council-house-sale scholarship the concept leans on
• Peter Hall et al. (not yet paged — see log) — containment as the settlement's planning arm: protecting "the property values, amenities and lifestyles of those who were already privileged" (1973)
• James Wentling — the settlement's production-side documenter: the "democratic type of housing stock," the Levittown engine (homeownership doubled mid-30%→mid-60%), and the affordability collapse that now prices the detached house "beyond the reach of entry-level buyers" (2017)

Related Concepts

• home — the concept's phenomenological counterpart: the lived home as territorialization vs the home as security-asset; the two registers must be kept distinct
• housing — the delivery system the settlement organizes: targets, house-builders, viability
• nimbyism — the settlement's growth-politics form: the homeowner as the veto-player at the (sub)urban edge
• suburbanism — the way of life the settlement subsidizes and normalizes
• neoliberal-metropolis — the market side: "a neoliberal belief in the power of the market (and house-builders in particular) was combined with active State support"
• homeliness — the domestic-affective register of the same word

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Living on the Edge: Building a Sub/Urban Region (Cochrane, Colenutt & Field 2015) — the definition ("route to security… through bricks and mortar," p. 569); the council-house-sale shift (Forrest & Murie); Cameron's Swindon speech (p. 569); the suburbs as "protected spaces of family houses, gardens and steadily rising property values"; the crisis-era bifurcation and exclusion (p. 575)
• The Construction of a Suburb (Røe 2015) — the contrasting tenure register: the Norwegian welfare-state alternative is cooperative, not owned — Skjettenbyen's 1,650 dwellings "organized as a cooperative with the inhabitants as shareholders" (p. 540) — with attachment built through social capital rather than asset appreciation, and the class project running the other way (the estate chosen against "the more 'snobbish areas' in the western parts of Oslo," p. 547). The pairing gives the concept its sharpest test: what does home-ownership democracy explain about the suburb that the Nordic cooperative does not — and what does the cooperative explain (a "mundane pragmatism" of belonging without equity) that the ownership settlement cannot? See welfare-state-housing, elective-belonging.
• Towers in the Park, Bungalows in the Garden (Keil 2015) — the ideology register and the American branch: Harris's finding, quoted — "'In Toronto and across the continent, just about everyone felt that home ownership was a good thing. They believed that it reinforced the independence of the family, encouraging thrift and reducing demands upon the public purse'" (p. 581) — with ownership "pitted against 'the lodger evil' and the 'unstable tenant'," its "disciplining effects of home ownership on workers and immigrants… especially emphasized" (p. 581). The article's thesis positions this settlement as the myth's engine: the emphasis on "a cultural politics of social conservatism, property ownership and privilege" (p. 579) — and the bungalow as the private project's sign: "the towers in the park and the bungalows in the garden were in themselves signs of the scaling of very different political projects, one public, one private" (p. 593). Where Cochrane et al. document the English settlement's crisis-era fraying and Røe its Nordic cooperative contrast, Keil names its disciplining function: home ownership as societal goal, privacy as "the glue of society and the protection of the family all at once" (p. 581). See welfare-state-housing, home, real-existing-suburbia.
• Designing a Place Called Home (Wentling 2017) — the settlement's production register: the "democratic type of housing stock" thesis (p. 18); the universal detached-dwelling preference claim (p. 18, citing Turner); Levittown's assembly line doubling homeownership "from the mid 30 % to the mid 60 % range" (p. 35) with its racial exclusion intact (p. 32); the persistence data (detached >80% of owned stock, "not declining, but rather growing," p. 5); and the settlement's present crisis — regulation pricing the product "beyond the reach of entry-level buyers" (p. 252), with lot delivery at 25% of total house cost (p. 252)

Open Questions

• The settlement's slogan equates home with security and security with property — but the article shows the security was always unevenly distributed (containment protecting the "already privileged") and is now fraying (bifurcated rentals, excluded first-time buyers). Is home-ownership democracy a settlement (a stable compromise) or a promise in default?
• How does this concept relate to home as theorized by Wise? The home/house/domus separation is designed to disarticulate home from property and authenticity — yet the English settlement fused them ("someone standing here with the keys in their hand thinking this place is mine"). Can the wiki hold both registers without one dissolving the other?
• Is the concept exportable? The 2015 paper's evidence is English (council-house sales, greenbelt, Cameron), but the "property owning democracy" rhetoric is American in origin. What are its planetary variants under planetary-suburbanization?