Property-based welfare and vulnerability in the private rented sector

Abstract

The paper argues that the high diversity among both tenants’ housing pathways and landlords’ property strategies has created complex patterns of welfare and vulnerability across PRS which are permeated by insufficiently recognised class, geographical and generational inequalities. Furthermore, market mechanisms tend to filter marginal tenants and marginal landlords towards the bottom end of the PRS creating multiple vulnerabilities and conversely, the encounter of affluent tenants and affluent landlords at the upper end of PRS casts a privileged segment of choice.