Climbing a rickety ladder: asset-based welfare and precarious owner occupation in the UK

A broad literature on asset-based welfare has emphasised the centrality of systems of housing finance to macroeconomic policy regimes, and their reliance on both financialisation and popular support for owner occupation. This paper draws on documents from The National Archives to argue that the origins of asset-based welfare in the UK can be understood as part of a cascade of unintended consequences initiated by attempts to mediate a tension between owner occupation and counter-inflation strategy that emerged in the early 1970s. It shows how government support for mortgage market liquidity to ease affordability contributed to house price increases, which then further undermined affordability and in turn focused attention on means of catalysing further mortgage market innovations and affordable housing schemes, such as shared ownership. The paper shows how, as the affordability context has shifted, such schemes have not straightforwardly widened the benefits of asset-ownership as intended, but in many cases established forms of precarious owner occupation.