On housing policy

Welcome to the 'On housing policy' event!

Join us in person at the Peter Hall Room (G01) Central House for an insightful discussion on housing policy. Co-organised by the SJP and its extended academic community, this seminar will critically address housing policies in relation to justice, funding and mobility, by three outstanding speakers:

Dr Anna Pagani research fellow from BSEER UCL.

Planning for Housing Beyond Growth: How can Systems Thinking Help?

Safe, secure, affordable, and decent housing is central to the achievement of a post-growth society, i.e., one fostering social and environmental justice beyond the growth imperative. Despite its crucial role, the social housing stock in England is in permanent decline. Political, economic, environmental and social pressures, compounded by the seemingly conflicting goals of a plurality of actors and a partial understanding of the system, generate a complexity that inevitably exposes corrective policies to the risk of unintended consequences. In this talk, I will discuss how research and teaching of systems thinking can help to understand, visualise, and navigate complexity, and co-design interventions accordingly. To this end, I will provide an overview of the diversity of mental models (e.g., housing associations, architects, residents, activists doctors, civil servants, developers) around the interrelationships between estate regeneration, health, and sustainability in London. In this setting, I will introduce early findings on possible places to intervene in the social housing system, and discuss their potential for planning for housing that prioritises environmental and social well-being beyond economic growth.

Dr Qian Li Teaching Fellow at Loughborough University London

Unconventional Monetary Policy and the Chinese Housing Market: a DSGE Approach.

With the rising importance of the housing market in China, this chapter studies how unconventional monetary policy affects house prices and the non-housing market, in a DSGE model during rising housing demand calibrated to match features of the Chinese economy. The DSGE model features two financial frictions: one between a borrower and a lender; and another between a lender and a depositor. These two frictions amplify the potential side effects of rising house demand, namely, that due to the greater collateral of borrowers, banks' funding goes more to housing goods than to non-housing goods, which escalates the crowding out of non-housing production during housing booms. An unconventional monetary policy that directly injects funds to finance non-housing goods production is proposed to influence this crowding-out effect. Such a policy is effective in mitigating crowding out effects and it has minimal impact on decreasing the collateral loan of borrowers. This unconventional monetary policy is also found to help reduce the impact response of housing and non-housing prices during economic booms.

Shizhen Wang PhD students from BSSC UCL.

What Do We Learn from Mobile Phone Location Data about Mobility and Housing During Covid-19

We use mobile phone location data from the UK to investigate the impact of mobility on the housing market during the Covid-19 pandemic. We analyse more than 267 million cell phone locations and timestamp records attributed to 126,261 individuals in England and Wales in March 2020 and 2021. Our analysis reveals that as a result of the pandemic, the average frequency with which individuals visit the workplace decreased from 4 days to 2.8 days per week. Aggregating the data at the Middle Layer Super Output Area (MSOA) level consisting of between 2,000 and 6,000 households and using a first-difference instrumental variable model, we observe that a 10% reduction in workplace visit frequency in an MSOA is associated with a 1% decline in house prices and a 4.6% decrease in rents. The effects on the housing markets are more pronounced in areas in which average commuting distances are larger and there is less availability of public transport. We also assess the effect of amenities and find that an MSOA with more amenity visits during the pandemic is associated with a larger house price increase, while the impact on rents is muted.

The session will end with a general discussion and Q&A with the audience, accompanied by refreshments.
We hope to see you all there.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Peter Hall Room (G01) Central House 14 Upper Woburn Place, London, WC1H 0NN, United Kingdom