State Neutrality and Housing Tenure: What Can States Promote?

ABSTRACT Many existing states, including the US and the UK, promote a particular housing tenure, owner‐occupation. Yet liberalism is commonly associated with commitment to a principle of state neutrality which holds that states ought to be neutral regarding different ideas of the good life. This raises important questions, and ones that have received little philosophical attention. Does a commitment to liberal state neutrality rule out the promotion of owner‐occupation? More broadly, what follows from a commitment to the neutrality principle for state action around housing tenure? In this article, I argue that a weaker neutrality principle, neutrality of justification, allows states wide latitude to promote particular housing tenures, including owner‐occupation. However, on a stronger and, I argue, more tenable reading of the neutrality principle, state promotion of owner‐occupation is plausibly ruled out. What is not ruled out, however, is state promotion of a different tenure: renting. Before making these arguments, I defend the application of the neutrality principle to state action around housing tenure.