Comparative housing research and policy: social housing rent-setting in western countries

The conference theme, 'Housing and the Credit Crunch---International Experiences and Responses', raises questions about the impact of the current Global Financial Crisis upon housing. The recent resurgence of interest in comparative housing research and policy also raises the possibility of global collaboration in the resolution of housing issues and problems. In the 1990s, debates ensued about the possibility, purpose and methodologies appropriate for comparative housing research. In an article written in 2001, Michael Oxley examined its aims and methodologies. He concluded that 'one of the greatest confusions in housing research that covers several countries is to box all such work together and call it 'comparative'.' He further suggested that 'the use of the term 'comparative housing research' should be limited to research that genuinely compares and contrasts.' He continues 'the best of such research produces plausible, evidence-based conclusions about the reasons for the similarities and differences.' In this article, he advocates 'a more scientific approach' (90) to comparative housing research and proposes that teams with different purposes and methodologies collaborate on projects: explorers, empiricists, theorists and scientists. He also raised the difficult issue of the transferability of policies and practices between countries. In his concluding comments on methodology in comparative housing research, Michael Oxley notes: 'International housing research should not be driven by a single methodological approach. Methods and purpose should go together. A variety of aims demand a variety of approaches. Methodology has to be fit for the purpose and it should be explicit. Too much housing research is without a clear method that has been reasoned to be the best way of tackling a particular issue. This is a reflection of a lack of theorising and a concern to engage in lots of description.' It is this linking of method and purpose that characterises, his article, particularly in his exposition of explorers, empiricists, theorists and scientists. Each of these research groups has a particular purpose and method that characterise their work. This paper begins with a brief review of Michael Oxley's article. But it moves beyond a simple review by suggesting (i) some refinements to the structure of comparative research proposed by Oxley - refinements in the purpose and method of each research group and in the relationships between the work of each research group (ii) the addition of a further research group, evaluators, with its own purpose and methodology, and (iii) some links between the research groups and the contexts for transferring policy between countries and, thus reworking these contexts of transferability into four 'implementation' groups. As such it builds on this significant article by Michael Oxley and proposes a division of labour whereby research and implementation groups can divide up the complex work of housing research and the transferability of policies and practices. In this division of labour each group is identified as having a particular purpose and associated method within the whole process of research and implementation. In the second section, I will present an extended illustration of how these research and implementation groups might operate. Coincidentally the same illustration is used by Michael Oxley in relation to the transferability of housing policy, viz. rent-setting. The illustration proposes an analytical framework2 for rent-setting. It then outlines how this analytical framework is important to each of the research and implementation groups. In doing so it elaborates further on these groups and locates comparative housing research within one of them. The illustration also presents some material on rent-setting, finance and the role of social housing in some selected countries: United Kingdom, United States of America, Canada, The Netherlands, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand. A conclusion will suggest that a division of work among these research and implementation groups provides a framework for collaborative global creativity, one which more efficiently facilitates the movement of results of work in one group to the next, which addresses the difficulties confronting comparative housing research and policy and, which raises the possibility of global collaboration in the resolution of housing issues and problems.