Gentrification, homelessness, and the work process: Housing markets and labour markets in the quartered city

The relationship between work and housing is much more than a relationship between labour markets and housing markets. The nature of the work process — not just how much is paid or where jobs are located — influences the type of housing that is demanded and the type of housing that is supplied. The paper provides a few examples, and then uses two cases, gentrification and homelessness, to illustrate the contention that the linkage between labour and housing is a fundamental internal one, in which the content of labour and the form of housing are directly related, and are prior to the external relations of the markets for each. The paper ends with the suggestion that these linkages vary by class, and suggests as prominent on a future research agenda an examination of the internal relationship between class, work processes, and the nature of housing provision. The examples used come from the United States, primarily New York City, but the processes clearly appear in all industrialised private market economies, and many aspects are relevant to Third World and socialist economies also.