Introduction: COVID-19 putting ‘the home’ and neighbourhoods into the spotlight

Housing policy has often been regarded as a ‘wobbly pillar’ of the welfare state, described also as ‘special’, ‘awkward’, ‘peculiar’ and indeed ‘a sore thumb’ (Torgersen, 1987). This is due to housing being both in the realms of the welfare state but also a commodity linked to tenure (eg home ownership, social or private renting), wealth and market value. The place of housing within social policy is therefore complex due to its disjointed position between the public and private realms and the intractability of some housing challenges to policy solutions. However, Malpass (2003, 2008) challenges the idea of the ‘wobbly pillar’ and argues that housing is a ‘cornerstone’ due to the assets, investment, infrastructure and goods and services that the housing sector supports. This chapter considers the extent to which the impact of the COVID-19 crisis reveals the ‘wobbly’ and more solid foundations of UK housing policy.

The COVID-19 pandemic has put ‘the home’ and neighbourhoods into the spotlight and refocused on the significance of housing – as both a safe and an unsafe space (Gurney, 2020). This chapter aims to outline and offer a positioning paper on the impact of COVID-19 on several high-level housing-related topics, including financialisaton, welfare reform, health, homelessness and housing inequality. Through this analysis, both negative and positive impacts of COVID-19 are explored within the English, Scottish and Welsh housing sectors. Key COVID-19 housing-related policy responses are then examined in the context of emerging evidence that the pandemic is reinforcing inequalities in housing.

The first section, ‘Financialisation, affordability and market failure within the housing sector’, considers financialisation, housing market failure and the inequalities in accessing, maintaining and living well in a house (Blakeley, 2019; Jacobs and Manzi, 2020). Blakeley (2021) highlights that the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to exacerbate these issues, where the UK is ‘sleepwalking’ into a new financial and homelessness crisis around housing.

The second section, ‘Impact of UK welfare reforms’, considers the wider picture in the light of welfare reform, as after experiencing a recession far exceeding the ‘great recession’ of 2008, the government now finds itself with record levels of debt of over L2 trillion, equivalent to over 100 per cent of GDP and 13 per cent higher than the European Union average (ONS, 2021b). Growth in unemployment has resulted in reduced tax income for the government and increased social security expenditure (HM Treasury, 2021). Additionally, furlough payments and the Universal Credit (UC) uplift signified new territory for a government committed to small government and welfare retrenchment, though these measures are relatively shortterm interventions.