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This is the ninth episode of the Disobedient Buildings podcast, an AHRC funded project at University of Oxford and focuses on the everyday lives

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of people living in ageing blocks of flat in three European countries the UK,

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Romania and Norway. My name is Inge Daniels,

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and in this episode I will be joined by Anna Andersen and Gabriela Nicolescu to further explore some of the key issues discussed in season one.

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In episode three, Ștefan Ghenciulescu questions the usefulness of the notion of social housing in Romania.

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And in this episode, we all three will zoom in on the characteristics of housing in London, Bucharest and Oslo.

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The first thing that somebody has to do to get when you speak about housing in socialist countries is that it's not social housing.

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I think that is that should be stated in a very powerful way because social housing is social housing

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for housing that is subsidised by the government for certain social categories and communities,

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which has problems having their own hope.

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Of course, that was also the case in the socialist housing with some of these blocks, but the main idea is that it was housing for everybody.

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One of the things that come up in in fieldwork and that I think almost everyone mentions is the fact that in Norway,

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a large portion of people own their homes and it's just generally encouraged, I think, to own rather than rent.

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And you know, there different ownership models where you could see an individual on a flat in

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the in the block or in the building or their ways when you don't own the flats,

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but you own the right less than your share in the Co-op.

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So the right to live in the flats and these like different ownership models, you know,

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they affect how much freedom you have as an individual, if you can sublet it or if you can have certain colours on your balcony or not.

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It also affects the responsibilities people have over the common areas.

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We also have social housing in Norway and it is run by the municipality.

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But this is a temporary solution and it is for those who need it the most.

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So the idea is that it is not permanent.

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It is something that should, let's say, get you on your feet and then ideally get you out into the housing market to get people to to own their flats.

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I mean, one of the things that that's changed and again,

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it's been brought up by so many participants is the fact that the Norwegian housing market used to be regulated,

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especially place where you had housing shortage, a shortage of materials.

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So it wasn't very regulated. What you could do. There was even a ban on bathtubs or so you couldn't make new bathtubs for a while after the war.

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But then these things that did change and the event, I mean,

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there's definitely a lot of different political decisions that that's led to where we are today.

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But the one event most people refer to is in 1994,

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the right government led by the prime minister quite a lot made changes that deregulated the market and in consequence,

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the housing prices and has been rising ever since.

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And what happens then, is that for the people who already are in the housing market, they own their flats.

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It's it's great because then when they sell their flat,

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they get to lock their money back and they can trade up to larger flats or move to larger houses.

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But it's very difficult for people to get into the market.

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You need to have in order to get the mortgage, you need to have a steady job, but you also need 50 percent of what you want to lend.

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You need cash upfront. So that means that if you don't have those savings, then you can't.

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You can't get a mortgage. When you can't buy a flat, then I mean,

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one of the communities I've been in touch with during the field work has been Muslim communities living in this, this borough.

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And one of the issues there is that according to religion, you shouldn't take up mortgages with with interest.

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And then that makes people not take up mortgages, even if they have a great job, steady job.

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They do have the savings, but they they don't want to take up the interest.

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And to solve that problem could be, you know, these like rent to buy schemes and other funding models than what we have in Norway today.

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But what happens? It's just that people, they fall outside of of the housing market and they rent and they have to move frequently and Else 

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Abrahamsen from makers hub, she talks about the fact that in the borough that I'm looking at,

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child poverty is rising and it's very troubling.

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You do see that the rich get richer and and the less privileged they stay less privileged.

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And it goes on for generations and I think should be done something about that.

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And one of the possibilities also that's come up in fieldwork that people are talking about.

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Participants are talking about this, that if you have higher taxation that say on your second home,

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that would prevent individuals to buy a second home as a mere investment and with less demand,

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you would then have maybe lower housing prices in Romania.

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I think the key concept is like in the other side, of course, property.

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But in Romania, it has a different meaning because immediately after the Second World War in the 1950s,

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when the socialist regime came to power, private property was nationalised.

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So what happened is that many houses in the city were taken by the state,

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and previous owners would pay rent to live in only one room maximum two of their previous property.

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The state managed to build blocks in the 60s,

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and these new blocks were really seen by everybody with good eyes because they had good conditions, running water.

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Everybody wanted to move, move there, and the renting prices were quite small.

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So starting with the 70s, the new blocks of flats that were built in the city could be in the property of individual owners.

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When the socialist regime collapsed in the 1990s, it was a mix of privately owned flats and rented flats.

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But in the 1990s, all the rented flats or most of the rented flags have been privatised.

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I mean, people could buy them for very small prices, which which for nothing, as they said.

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And this almost full privatisation of the housing stock created something very, very interesting in the present.

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It's a lot of tension both to put on the housing stock, especially in the context in which in 2008,

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a law called the restitution retro sedation law made in a way wanted to repair what the socialist regime did in the 1950s.

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So this law gave the right of the prison socialist owners or those who inherited

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these properties to evacuate those that were led by the state to rent.

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These people evacuated from these houses have nowhere to go because the state has no flats to give an important percentage of the population.

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Definitely more than five percent. People talk about 10 or even 15 are people who are pushed from the cities.

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I mean, Bucharest has nothing to give them.

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Ilinca Păun-Constantinescu in episode six talks about the fact that in Romania, there is not enough consideration given to the social housing.

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And this is also in this context in which, you know, property was taken from individuals was given to the state and now back.

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It is given to individuals in very complicated ways, and the communist history has huge impacts on whatever happens to people.

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I do research also with two participants who live in social housing.

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And one participant who is on this waiting list for eight years in the conditions in which she she has.

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She is a disabled mother of one and her own child, who is three years old.

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She's also disabled, and she didn't manage to obtain a flat because she she cannot prove that she was evacuated from

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one of these flats that were given by the socialist state to to her grandmother or something.

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So it's a complicated story. So in the UK, this neoliberal turn also had a huge impact on the provisioning of public or council housing.

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It was one of the four cornerstones of the post-war welfare.

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State, public or council housing refers to rented homes that are built, manage and maintained by local municipal authorities.

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Public housing, as such, can be traced back to the late 1800s or the early nineteen hundreds.

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But their heyday actually was after World War Two,

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when most of the country was in ruins and the Labour government committed to this a large building, this large council estates across the country.

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It's interesting to note as a statistic that by 1979, over 30 percent or one third of the UK housing stock was actually public housing for rent.

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But since the 1980s, so just right after this with this kind of preference for neo liberalism or neo liberal thinking,

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subsequent governments have been promoting homeownership, which seems to be a theme throughout our study.

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And this most famously was, of course, introduced if you want by Margaret Thatcher, who promoted this right to buy scheme,

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which means that tenants in council housing were given the opportunity to buy their own flats.

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And even today, we have a huge housing crisis here in London.

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Most commentators, really the link is dwindling public housing stock with her policy, the right to buy scheme.

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But these kind of policies have continued over time and more recently,

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we had to help to buy scheme for young people to help them onto the property ladder.

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On the other side or the flip side, renting is discouraged and very few legal protections, and they are given hardly any support.

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Of course, in episode five, Jackie Peacock, who herself is kind of in charge of an organisation who helps the people who rent in London,

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she highlights the dire situation in much detail documents if you want her fight for fairer housing on the ground.

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And I thought it would be interesting to kind of give some more detail of how this works out,

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where I did my fieldwork in central London, where I looked at five blocks or estates that were built between the 1950s and the 1980s.

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They were conceived.

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All of these flats I looked at were conceived as Council of Public Housing, although one of the blocks was run by a housing association.

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So of my participants, we lived in these five blocks.

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One third is renting and two thirds owning, which again reflects the general population approximate, I think.

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So some of those participants who were renting were private renters.

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They were often renting or from the owners who sublet the flats.

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But still, quite a large majority of people in the blocks are social tenants, so their rents are subsidised.

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But they also might claim other benefits that are means tested.

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Their landlord is the council, and landlord is a very interesting term.

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It's used for people who rent out property that they own.

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And in episode two, Danny Dorling again traces this use of the term to actually feudal times, which is, I think,

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fascinating where he says that it was the Lord of the Manor was given land land by the king or the queen to build homes for workers on.

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So it's interesting that this term has persisted until today, and it reveals quite a lot about the class structure in the UK, I think.

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But then, as I said, two thirds of the participants were owning their own flats and these people are quote leaseholders.

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The term refers to the fact that they owned flats for the period or the term of the lease agreement,

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which in the best case scenario is between 99 and 125 years.

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So the owner is the leaseholder, but the person who actually owns the land the block is built on is called the freeholder.

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And in most cases, in my fieldwork, this was the council.

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So the people who owned the flats pay an annual ground rent and they pay service charges, which can be very expensive.

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But also there are many limitations to changes they can make.

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For example, in the quite a few of the blocks the flooring has to be, carpets cannot be wooden flooring or concrete.

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And of course, more recent tenants would like to have the latest fashion and flooring,

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and it's a kind of secret thing they do for the landlord doesn't know this is going on.

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And also things like pets like cats and dogs are not allowed in many of the properties.

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And again, this is contentious because particularly during the lockdown,

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quite many people were seeing that having these animals around illegally, if you want really help them during times of isolation and loneliness.

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Thank you for listening to our Disobedient Buildings podcast edited by Anna Andersen and produced by Jack Soper.

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If you want to hear more, go to our website at WW Dot Disobedient Buildings dot com or search for a podcast where you normally find your podcasts.

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In the final episode of Disobedient Buildings, the Team will discuss the impact of the pandemic on housing and wellbeing in the UK, Romania and Norway.