Losing touch: class, social capital, and out of area housing

Whilst the conceptualization of a housing crisis has become a common narrative within politics, research, and the media, its nebulous nature can risk failing to recognize the breadth of experiences or its exact relationship to inequality. By looking at out of area housing placements as one aspect of the ‘housing crisis’, this paper explores the way by which experiences of housing can be a disbenefit to people’s wellbeing through fracturing important social networks and connections. Using primary evidence from households placed out of area by their local authority, the paper recognizes the importance of class as a way to understood market power, which is increasingly salient as housing becomes increasingly commodified. However, in seeking to broaden this position, the concept of social capital is introduced as a way of counterbalancing economic understandings of inequality with social vulnerabilities. The paper is based on 10 households placed out of area following the use of freedom of information requests to English local authorities to ascertain the extent of the practice. The paper argues that out of area housing diminishes social capital, which as a component of total capital, can be seen as further impoverishing vulnerable households.