Universalism lost? The magnitude and spatial pattern of residualisation in the public housing sector in Sweden 1993–2012

Abstract

An important feature of the Swedish housing system is universalism, meaning that housing provision should encompass broad income groups and thus not only be directed towards poor households. Considering the recent decades of marketization and liberalisation of the Swedish housing system, concerns have been raised whether universalism remains as a key feature of the Swedish housing system. The aim of this paper is to improve our understanding of processes of residualisation in Sweden. This is a process whereby the public housing sector is becoming dominated by low income households. To describe, analyse and understand processes of residualisation in Sweden and across regions, I use a novel Index of Residualisation and longitudinal register data covering the period 1993-2012. The results indicate that the rental sector as a whole is undergoing a process of residualisation, but that there are clear variations in the magnitude of residualisation across regions. The process of residualisation is most pronounced in sparsely populated regions. The relative size of the public rental sector is a key factor to consider in order to understand the diverging trends. Regions with smaller rental sectors are associated with higher levels of residualisation, indicating that public housing may have the function of social housing in these regions.

Tenure type mixing and segregation

“…Public rental has declined in recent decades, and in 2012, it represented 17% of the dwellings. Traditionally, Swedish public rental has been the housing option for different income groups, but in recent years, the proportion of low-income groups has increased (Borg, 2019). Public rentals consist of apartments in municipality-owned multifamily housing that are rent-regulated.…”

Spatial, Financial and Ideological Trajectories of Public Housing in Malmö, Sweden

“…Moreover, Sweden's public housing is certainly not as stigmatized as in other countries such as the United States (see Vale 2007). Yet currently Sweden is witnessing deepening inequalities, even more extensively than other OECD countries (OECD 2017), and these structural changes are reflected in the housing landscape through processes of segregation (Andersson and Hedman 2016;Scarpa 2015), residualisation (Borg 2019;Grander 2017), gentrification (Andersson and Turner 2014;Hedin et al 2012) and displacement (Baeten et al 2016). Within the context of these processes, we find an altered role of public housing.…”

How Housing Systems are Changing and Why: A Critique of Kemeny’s Theory of Housing Regimes

“…This, within the context of rising poverty, has increased the reliance on the "secondary" market, whereby municipalities lease properties from MHC and private landlords to house poor and vulnerable households, but on terms inferior to those of mainstream tenants. Those in the middle are being squeezed out of the MHC sector, whilst the overall effect has been towards residualisation, particularly in municipalities with smaller public housing sectors (Borg 2019).…”