Housing policies and their relationship to residential moves for families with young children

Abstract

Residential mobility (or ‘moving home’) is a common and often desired occurrence for families with young children.  Many seek upward moves, to homes that better suit expanding households and areas that are deemed good for children.  Families will seek to avoid ‘disadvantaging moves’ (those which are involuntary, frequent or which take them to less good housing or neighbourhoods), although much less attention is given to these kinds of moves in the housing policy literature.  In this paper, I explore how advantaging moves could be facilitated and disadvantaging ones minimized, through housing policy.  Drawing on a review of policy in the UK since 1980 and particularly in England since 2010, I develop a schema for considering kinds of policies that might impact on different kinds of moves for families in different housing tenures, as well as looking at the ways in which policies not explicitly designed to impact on mobility might nevertheless have this effect. This provides a framework for policy development and evaluation which should be applicable in different national contexts.