‘Will there be money? Yes, but you’ll pay more for it’: variegated financialization in social housing

Research on the financialization of social housing has focused on its construction as an asset class. Less studied are the transformations occurring where financialization is relatively mature. This paper uses the English housing association (HA) sector to advance a conceptualization of financialization as variegated and subject to political and economic risks. Empirically it provides a mixed method, longitudinal framework to demonstrate that the path dependency of HA business models influences the form and extent of institutional investment. Furthermore, it explores the transformation of social housing as the preconditions for the extension of finance – low interest rates and expenditure, increased commercial revenue – are disrupted. In a more challenging environment, risk is distributed unevenly across the HA sector. HAs experiencing constraints upon their borrowing capacity face acute trade-offs between financial viability and investment in new and existing homes. The paper illustrates how the variegated financialization of housing systems continues to reproduce itself, albeit at greater cost for affected social landlords.