Quantifying residualisation: the changing nature of social housing in the UK

Over the last 40 years, social housing has become dominated by households on low incomes. However, there is a lack of recent research that quantifies residualisation, particularly the historical trends. This paper therefore presents an Index of Residualisation as a novel means of quantifying the changes. Using the Index, it is shown that, in 2010 social housing in the UK was three times more residualised than in 1970, but that residualisation has been broadly stable over the last 20 years. However, the UK government’s social housing reforms are likely to change the tenure significantly and the impact of these changes on residualisation needs to be monitored. The Index is ideally suited to this role, and can also be used to investigate the drivers of residualisation and conduct comparative studies.