Spatial Segregation, Social Mixing and Social Housing Supply: an analysis of the contradictions in government housing supports for low-income households in Dublin

This thesis interrogates the contradictions within housing policy related to social mixing and government housing supports for low-income households in Dublin. Whilst social mixing policy is inherently spatial in its focus, because it attempts to address socio-spatial segregation through the dispersal of social housing, the spatial distribution of housing allowance claimants in the private rented sector has received much less attention. This is a significant oversight because reliance on these subsidies has expanded radically in Ireland (and several other Western European countries) since the mid-1990s (Turner and Elsinga, 2005; Norris, 2016). To present a critical and empirically informed analysis of the spatial dynamics of government housing supports, in all their complexity, this thesis has developed an interdisciplinary research design that integrates approaches and insights from a number of areas of scholarship. It draws on GIS spatial analysis to provide crucial, and until now absent, empirical evidence and analysis. It draws on policy analysis to draw out the key discourses and policy rationales through which the policy consensus on tenure mixing has evolved. It adopts a political economy theoretical orientation in order to situate housing policy within market dynamics, specifically those of Dublin's housing market, as well as to critically reveal how policy discourses and rationalities normalise and naturalise housing markets. The empirical findings identify a strong macro-level pattern of socio-spatial segregation in Dublin that has three persistent dimensions: a divided city, a cluster effect and a sprawl effect. These macro level spatial patterns have persisted over at least the past two decades despite policy reforms. This thesis reveals that despite the long-standing focus on social housing and socio-spatial segregation, market housing also generates patterns of tenure segregation. However, housing policy disregards the spatiality of housing markets and that marketised government housing supports contribute to patterns of socio-spatial segregation. Furthermore, housing policy and housing markets interact to contribute to these patterns. This means that housing policy is contradictory and does not meet its own social mixing objectives. This analysis has wider relevance for many other jurisdictions that utilise marketised methods of meeting social housing need, such as housing allowances in the private rented sector.