Moral politics of housing: insiders/outsiders

The Week in Housing 28/02/25

Here’s a riddle for you: the following are all among the most contentious issues in housing politics internationally - what do they have in common?

• Gentrification

• Air BnB/turistification

• Immigration/refugee accommodation

• International funds

• Non-resident investors

The answer, as no doubt you guessed, is that they involve ‘outsiders’ or ‘foreigners’. This raises the issue of what we might call the ‘moral politics’ of housing, the kinds of values that underpin the frameworks people use to make sense of what’s happening in their neighbourhood, city or nation. I came across the idea of moral politics l during a seminar last year with Adam Standring (check out some of his work here). He argues that ‘at both the microsocial and macrosocial level, morals serve an important role in making social interactions intelligible’ and that they ‘form expectations and evaluations, serving as cognitive shortcuts’ for people to evaluate the world around them. In other words, the politics of housing isn’t just about the economic or even immediate housing interests of different cohorts (owners versus non-owners, for example), but also about the socio-cultural values that underpin what we think is ‘right’, ‘fair’, ‘desirable’ etc.

The institutional landlord sector in Ireland know all about this. They are well known to be very unhappy about the term ‘vulture funds’ and their general public reception in Ireland. Although there is no research on this, it seems obvious that the fact they’re ‘international funds’, rather than Irish operators, has been central to the fact that criticisms of international funds resonate so strongly with the public. The idea that there is something fundamentally unfair about global financial institutions ‘swooping in’ and buying up Irish housing has proved remarkably potent in the Irish housing debate, and indeed been something of a fixation for the left and the media. There are no doubt valid reasons to criticize the institutional landlord sector. My point is, however, that the fact they are outsiders is one of the reasons these criticisms have captured the public imagination.

The other obvious case is immigration. The idea that Ireland should ‘house our own first’ is central to the wider public discussion on housing, despite the fact that is largely absent from official public sphere. At a more local level, the opposition to IPAS centres has been underpinned by local residents’ belief that they have the right, and even the obligation, to ‘protect’ their neighourhoods or towns from what they perceive as dangerous outsiders (read my extended piece on this phenomenon here).

A similar set of dynamics are at play in opposition to gentrification, Air BnB, Russian oligarchs purchasing luxury apartments in London, digital nomads in cities like Lisbon etc. They all involve questions about how housing systems prioritize (or don’t) ‘insiders’ over ‘outsiders’, i.e. who housing is for. The dividing line between insider and outsider is of course not natural or fixed, but itself a function of cultural norms and values, forms of relating to place etc.

I realize that many will balk at the parallel I’m drawing here between the generally progressive opposition to funds and the generally reactionary opposition to immigration. The politics of each case is indeed very different. From a left perspective, the cause of these threats is ultimately the financial market, which places no value on ‘attachment to place’ and the ‘right to the city’ enjoyed by residents. And their targets are Government, funds etc. In the case of migration, the cause is generally seen to be an excessively liberal migration regime, and politicians’ prioritization of this over citizens. Their targets are typically vulnerable minorities. There is clear blue water between protesting outside asylum seeker accommodation and protesting about gentrification-led house price increases.

Nevertheless it seems impossible to ignore the fact that many progressive housing movements revolve around residents’ claims over their neighourhoods and the threats posed by outside forces.

An economistic perspective might encourage us to dismiss such political claims as ‘populist’ and ‘simplistic’ on the basis of some technical reason. If we could only divorce ourselves from retrograde things like values and beliefs, everything will be just fine. Although this bedtime story for experts is tempting, the reality is that values and beliefs are, and always will be, central to the economics and politics of housing.

To quote Standring again, ‘abandoning the terrain of morals doesn’t remove morals from politics but removes an important tool/strategy for change’.

Nowhere is this more important than ‘attachment to place’. Attachment to place is possibly one of the most intrinsic features of human beings, it is profoundly embedded in our psychology. From tribal loyalties to nationalist mass movements, attachment to place is among the most motivating forces in politics, a powerful way to build collective identity and action. A couple of examples illustrate its importance to housing policy challanges.

First, our ability to accommodate international protection applicants is clearly running up against the issues discussed above. The idea that additional IPAS accomodation could be rolled out without coming up against the politics of place has proved, in retrospect at least, naïve (for some great research on this see Bryan Fanning’s recent work).

Second, if we are increasingly reliant on international finance for housing supply, but the moral politics of our housing system conflicts with this, we are likely to face a volatile policy context which poses many potential pitfalls. Consider the famous case of the housing estate in Maynooth which was bought in 2021 by Round Hill Capital. The public and media reaction to this was incredible. Despite the fact that the country had been, for years, pursuing a policy of attracting international into our housing market, people were genuinely appalled that such organizations could have the temerity to buy suburban/commuter belt ‘family homes’. This reaction was steeped in moral politics: culturally embedded ideas about what types of houses and places are for ‘Irish families’. It led to an incredibly rapid political response, with legislation introduced virtually overnight. That legislation was based on an apparently arbitrary distinction between single family dwellings and apartments.

The upshot of all this is that we need to embed a recognition of the power of place attachment, and the specific ‘moral’ forms it takes in a given context, more explicitly in how we think about housing politics and policy.

For my part, I am generally sympathetic to the idea that existing residents must be able to participate in how the place they live develops. But I find it hard to reconcile this both with wider housing need and my own commitment to diversity.

Events & News

Threshold and Housing Rights NI have issued an invitation to tender for a survey PRS tenants North and South. Conor O’Toole’s (ESRI) webinar on the housing and economic outlook for 2025 has been re-scheduled to March the 3rd.

What I’m reading

A new ESRI publication on the need for PRS investment in energy upgrades, and a second new ESRI publication on monetary shocks, the financial system and house prices. Carla Kayanan of the Data Stories project has published a paper on Housing Need and Demand.