Ownership rhetoric and the question of belonging

Howard, Matthew (2020). Ownership rhetoric and the question of belonging. In: Claydon, Lisa; Derry, Caroline and Ajevski, Marjan eds. Law in Motion: 50 years of Legal Change. The Open University Law School, pp. 105–118.

URL: http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/50YearsOfLaw/?p=210

Abstract

50 years ago, in Pettitt v Pettitt, Lord Diplock famously confirmed the emergence of a 'property­owning, particularly a real-property-mortgaged-to-a-building-society-owning, democracy' (824) in post-war Britain. This chapter takes this statement as the departure point for demonstrating how ownership rhetoric and the ideological commitment to private home­ownership has informed decades of development in housing policy. After providing an overview of the approach successive governments have taken to housing policy, which combined to create quite a problematic outlook for the public provision of homes, the chapter turns its attention to the recent case of Z v Hackney LBC and Anor. That case exemplifies the difficulties wrought by the public housing environment, compounded as they are by a rights framework which gives little weight to the matter of considerable, but perhaps more nebulous, socio-economic rights. The chapter argues that this presents problems for geographical and political senses of belonging.

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