Owner occupation: at home in a spatial, financial paradox

Abstract

The normalisation of home ownership is well-rehearsed, yet ongoing. In a bid to free up the intellectual, political and practical imagination around owner occupation, this paper confronts its absurdity. By way of four ‘thought experiments’, the text interrogates: a spatial paradox enabling housing services to deliver investment returns; a financial paradox enacted to wrest the rabbit of fiscal well-being from the hat of indivisible assets; some uncanny qualities infusing the security of home ownership; and the ill-fated anticipation that leveraged ownership might conjure something out of nothing where welfare needs arise. Having reviewed some limits to tenure-divided, ownership-centred housing systems, the paper concludes with a practical and ethical reflection on the future.