State Formation and Housing Policies: Assisted Housing Programmes and Cooperative Housing in Postwar Canada

Abstract

<p>This thesis examines the causes of change in the assisted housing programmes of the postwar Canadian state, and experience of these changes by cooperative housing producers. It demonstrates that transformations in assisted housing policies and procedures have occurred through class struggle over necessary changes in state intervention in the housing sector. It argues that this process of state development is geographically uneven, and corroborates this claim through studies of experiences of cooperative housing policy implementation in two Toronto neighbourhoods.</p> <p>The proposed theory of state formation is argued to offer advantages over existing theoretical explanations of housing policy change. These include showing the links between social forces and state development, and providing a clearer specification of how social structure and human agency combine to produce policy outcomes over time and space. The theory argues that changes in the state are the outcome of class struggle and competition over the direction and substance of policy initiatives. It is found that this theory helps to explain the timing and characteristics of postwar assisted housing programmes, and transformations in the regulation of cooperative housing. Analysis of the development of two Toronto cooperatives shows that local relations and practices help to determine how housing policies and implementation procedures are experienced. Thus it indicates how experiences of the state are produced in particular places. It is discovered that recent struggles over assisted housing policies have led to a withdrawal of the state from assisted housing provision, and pressures to deliver community-based housing in more commodified forms. These changes have had contradictory effects on peoples' capacities to deliver housing alternatives to Canadians.</p>