Haven’t read the book yet but I found it very strange on the podcast that the author barely mentioned the long term constraints on local government in this country and the more recent and acute impact of austerity. Seems obvious to me that if councils can’t raise more tax and have their core grant cut this will limit their policy options in a whole bunch of areas. All large English cities have tried to increase their population and attract private investment to counter these constraints, it’s just Manchester has been more successful at it than most.
I'm a Mancunian, born in Hulme in a victorian slum in which I, my sister and my mam and dad all slept in one room. When I was 7 we were relocated to Wythenshawe and our slum was demolished, thankfully. Incidentally, that slum was owned by the C of E who were happy to take my dad's money on a weekly basis while we lived in squalor.
I've always loved visiting Manchester city centre and always will.
I recall in the late 60s early 70s the centre was beginning to decline and thankfully Tony Wilson started the ball rolling regarding the cultural rebirth of the city.
True to say that particular identity has faded somewhat with the demise of the Hacienda, but I still embrace the trajectory the city is following right now.
In my view the working class identity still dominates or at least plays a massive role in the persona of our city. Which is a good thing!
I now live in a semi rural area near Chester, but I'm a proud Mancunian 'til I die.
Ken, even though I too grew up in what would today be considered a 'slum' in Collyhurst ,although not in one room, I still have a fascination for the area. I wouldn't want to go back and live there, it would be too hard today , I've gone soft! I would, however, just like to walk the original streets and wonder how we managed it.
Manchester will always be my place , I'm rooted even though I live far away, those roots carry a long way.
I understand "slum" is perhaps a general term, but our 'two up-two down' had only 'one' up because the back bedroom was condemned as the floor wasn't stable. We had no hot water and only one cold tap in the scullery. The scullery had a cupboard, a belfast sink and a gas cooker. Me and my sister bathed once a week in a tin bath in front of a coal fire. The water was heated in white enamel buckets on the gas hob. The tin bath was hung on a nail in the yard most of the time. I don't have a clue where mam and dad went for a bath. There was only an outside toilet, but our crowded bedroom had a communal potty near the door which was usually brimming (number ones only!) and often had fag ends floating on the surface. But I was a happy kid.
Very similar Ken. I remember my parents used to go to Osborne St baths and wash house off Collyhurst Road for a bath. Mum also took the heavy washing there probably in the empty pram, which were huge in those days, that was used for the four of us as babies.
You just jogged my memory, Anne. Completely forgot about the public wash house. My vague recollection is that it was tiled, and kind of bawdy and noisy, all the women smiling and laughing and banter heavy.
I also just remembered that I woke up in the middle of the night once and said "Mam, there's bricks in my bed" She responded, half asleep, "It's just a dream you're alright" Anyway, next morning there were bricks in my bed. The internal wall had come away. No injuries, but I was covered in plaster and grit.
The wash houses were mostly tiled from memory and the baths were in separate cubicles. I don't remember showers there, the only showers I saw were at Mersey Bank playing fields where we used to go by bus for games as my school was opposite Strangeways and only had a small yard.
You essentially made this point yourself in the article but I struggle to engage with people like Isaac who have such a specific and narrow viewpoint given they have no interest in presenting realistic, viable alternatives to the one they have such an issue with.
To share a quote I’ve seen over the years in various forms, the problems of growth are far more preferable to the problems of decline.
This kind of great article is one of the reasons I subscribe to The Mill. Real analysis, examination of evidence, and serious debate focused on advancing understanding of a very important subject. Thank you!
“I can see why many people choose a faceless Bavarian pension fund over fielding aggressive WhatsApp messages from a coke-addicted landlord in Stockport.”
Joshi Herrmann riding his editorial chariot like Charlton Heston with a team of fiery white horses in hand. His course through Isaac Rose’s angry book seems carefully steered. Manchester is as Manchester does, and MCC’s brand of autocracy has been something of a tightrope act for decades.
Bob Scott is certainly a figure worth recalling. Alongside his Olympian endeavours, his relighting of two theatres (Palace and Opera House) co-creation of a third (Royal Exchange), he also chaired RNCM and founded Cornerhouse (along with Raymond Slater, chairman of construction company Norwest Holst). Isaac Rose has Bob Scott firmly on the dark side, Joshi Herrmann casts him in different light:
“To [Isaac Rose] a figure like Bob Scott is a figure of suspicion; to me, he reads like exactly the kind of person a dying city needs to have any chance of reviving itself”.
I was there, and I am firmly with Joshi.
To him, a figure like Bob Scott is a figure of suspicion; to me, he reads like exactly the kind of person a dying city needs to have any chance of reviving itself.
The recent Resolution Foundation report on Manchester and Birmingham was very revealing. If you take the UK’s most economically successful cities they have an economic geography that this guy would loath I.e. a big share of employment is in the core, they are absolute graduate magnets, and the income of residents goes up as you in from the periphery to centre (generally the opposite in GM).
So the whole worldview is like some giant counterfactual where we get more economically successful, but somehow escape these ‘neoliberal’ patterns of city development. It kind of reminds me of post-war greenbelt & new towns, and national industrial strategies where Birmingham was not allowed to build more car factories or commercial office space in the 1960’s because that kind of high value manufacturing related employment was to be used prop up other less fortunate places. We can see now that we just took our advantages and hobbled them, and nobody really gained in the long term from that.
A really fascinating article which, apart from your well-made points, introduced me to Bob Scott, who sounds like an extraordinary figure, looking at his Wikipedia entry. You've sold another copy of his memoir. He feels like someone who could have set up a hedge fund, but instead used his networking skills and business acumen to do exciting things for the public benefit here, and with the City of Culture in Liverpool. What an operator!
These views look authentically held, but feel like a false progressive NIMBY narrative. Most places in the UK, if they get their act together, and create economic opportunity are going to put their housing markets under a lot pressure, not least because grads will be retained and other people in the UK, perhaps ones with higher skills and incomes, will migrate there (which is a positive agglomeration effect). The key thing is to throw as much market rate and affordable housing in front of it as you can. GM does that in pockets, but not so much in aggregate. When I look at Deansgate Square I’m slightly torn, because I’m not sure it will turn out to be great urbanism, but what I do know is those are people with higher incomes and skills whose taxes and spending power have been retained within the city, and that gives MCC and Salford resources to help people who struggle (especially give both still own significant land). The counterfactual is to look at Nottingham and Birmingham siting on section 114’s and about to do horrible things to their own people. Looking ahead I do worry about the political spillover from the perfectly predictable effect on the GM donut, which you are seeing now in Stockport, but we’ll begin to see on the north side, and that will be a good thing, but we’ve seen how febrile and polarised some those places are.
Manchester since the early 1980’s has been a story of transformation and fabulous success. Obviously there is more to do, but the city has been going in the right direction and needs to continue.
I haven’t read the book and don’t intend to. However its proposition as summarised by the reviewer is politically motivated nonsense.
Interesting and thoughtful article. Couple of thoughts. Firstly, I would much rather have a corporate landlord (as is common, for instance in the private rented sector in Germany) than the mess of amateur landlords we have here.
Secondly, the link between additional housing and lower prices is tenuous. The FT article you linked to is behind a paywall, but I have seen it before, and it doesn't quote any real scientific evidence. The actual main determinants of house prices are economic activity (principally employment), the availability of finance both for individuals and corporate (this has been unusually freely available in the last decade, which has pushed house prices up), and the price of existing properties. This is not to say that new properties do not affect house prices at all, but the effect is very much overstated. Manchester needs new dwellings to cope with the increasing numbers of people who want to live or work in our fine city - but this will not affect affordability. If we want true affordability for lower paid workers and the economically inactive, then we just have to grit our teeth and build some genuine social housing.
"I found—one might expect it, perhaps—that the small landlords are usually the worst. It goes against the grain to say this, but one can see why it should be so. Ideally, the worst type of slum landlord is a fat wicked man, preferably a bishop, who is drawing an immense income from extortionate rents. Actually, it is a poor old woman who has invested her life’s savings in three slum houses, inhabits one of them, and tries to live on the rent of the other two—never, in consequence, having any money for repairs."
I think this issue might repay some more journalistic investigation from The Mill. It feels intuitively right that a corporate, maybe foreign landlord would be worse than a local person with a couple of houses. But the corporate landlord has an interest in a steady income, good standard of repairs to maintain asset value and decent tenant relations. The local landlord may be more interested in high returns, may not have access to responsive, high quality tradespeople, and we have all heard horror stories of landlord behaviour. There will be exceptions in both sectors, but I wonder if the generality holds?
Perhaps section 106 regs should be more ambitious to ensure more benefits of the city's boom are shared but undeniably Manchester is in better shape than 25 or 50 years ago. Absent new residential developments rents would be much higher. If Mr Rose wants to wallow in the nostalgia of the failed north he can get on any bus to any Lancashire mill town. My only gripe about "New Manchester" is the endless boosterism: "tallest" this and "biggest" that.
S106 is not the answer - & I write as a planner. First, development costs in the city will always be high, so there may be little or no money to divert. Second, there are many competing demands for S106 cash. More for social housing might means less for schools and new surgeries, etc., that new devt needs. And 3rd, developers are expert at gaming the S106 system to reduce the amount they pay.
I don't think there is any evidence that without the new flats that rents would be higher. It's much more likely that the city centre economy would be much smaller.
I feel compelled to push back on the "fat, wicked landlord" stereotype. I own a handful of properties around Tameside. Call me amateur if you must but the flats are all professionally managed by an agent who takes 8% / month. They carry out an inspection every 6 months, arrange all repairs using tradesmen who get a steady stream of work, so tend to be reliable, or risk losing the gig.
Most of my tenants are long term and I've kept rent increases below inflation for the last 4 years. On the flip side, I had one tenant who, during the pandemic, quit his job, and stopped paying rent knowing he couldn't be evicted. One year on, he left, having trashed the place and leaving me to clean up the mess. Literally.
I'd like to think I'm better than some faceless foreign investor who's only interest is raking in as much profit as possible.
I don't think anyone would say there are not good small landlords, and you sound like one. But there are a lot of horror stories from small landlords too. But all this is anecdotal. The real question for public policy is whether an army of small landlords is a better way of providing housing than other models, including institutional owners, or registered social landlords, or even councils.
I don't disagree Peter. But I do get fed up with the adjective "slum" being used so frequently. Of course, we only hear the horror stories, they make much better headlines. My flats are my pension and my future legacy so I've got just as much interest as a corporate entity in keeping them in good condition.
Great that we agree! I suspect we would also agree that the word 'slum' has so much baggage that it has lost all meaning (Mill journalists note). But while I understand why you are a landlord, we do seriously need to question how we got to a point where society has commodified and fetishised housing as investment rather than a place to live.
The quote is from the road to Wigan Pier, written in the 30s when there certainly were slums, the book is quite explicit on the conditions then. And he was praising the 'fat wicked' landlord as the good one...
The data from the US suggests places that built a lot of market rate housing by changing their zoning practices, like Minneapolis, have seen much better affordability than other Midwest places that didn’t, but yes we need more social housing.
I'm not saying this is wrong, but is there a link to a scientific paper you could let us have? Almost everything I have seen is anecdote or opinion. It feels right that more housing = lower prices. But I just don't think there is any real evidence to support it.
Everything I came here to say has been said, so just to reinforce the key sentiment: another cracking piece. Your honesty about your own discomfort in writing it is really welcome.
Yes, I found that strange too. Now that he's been up for a few years Joshi must have seen the error of his ways. More joy in heaven over a sinner that repents etc.
A really interesting article Joshi and a subject of which I've been tiptoeing around the margins for a while. The only experiences I've had of living in Manchester are from my parents generation of renting, privately and then a council house . They bought a house much later on in life , my Dad was 50 or so and I'd left home by then to move away.
I'm looking in at this point ,not having to experience the ups and downs of city living but feel the present social housing model just doesn't seem to work very well as far as looking after tenants goes ,from what I've read. Am I wrong in that assumption? Was the old council model superior ? I'm too far removed really to have absolute clarity but I'm interested to know.
I'll be interested also to read what others have to say.
I'd like to comment on this story but every time I try, I get lost in the mysteries of Substack ...
What I want to say, lately returned to Manchester, is that I am depressed by the gap between the grand talk and soaring skyline and the squalor at street level. If all that investment does not get the streets swept, never mind meeting housing need, what is the point? If I saw another European city like it I would not be going back, pardon my pickiness.
I totally agree. From a distance Manchester city centre looks great, but down at street level, you realise what a cesspit it is, with litter and rubbish everywhere. God know what visitors think because I as a Mancunian am embarrassed at the state of our streets.
I dread to think what my nearest city Birmingham will look like after the council cuts get to work ...or more to the point won't get to work because street cleaning won't be a priority. We have to have pride of place though for where we live/work and bring our children up .
This isn’t a terribly substantial comment but here goes……..
I will now get and read The Rentier City because it sounds interesting and I’m struck by your responses to the content of the book as you describe it but……..
I think your piece is less a review of The Rentier City than it is an assault on the theses of the book.
Could all get a bit circular but I feel that Isaac Rose should have a right to reply to your review…..or at least an opportunity to have a go back, via The Mill, at some of your arguments.
I guess I should preface this comment by saying that I am friends with Rose - and a big fan of his work. I'm also _structurally_ a part of the influx of outsiders into the city: I'm a Canadian academic who works as a senior lecturer in the Sociology department at Manchester Metropolitan. I research the digital spatialization and political economy of cultural and media industries, the very thing that Manchester continues to dine out on so many years on since the Hacienda. And it’s obviously key to the story of Manchester’s redevelopment: as evidenced by the importance of a theatre personality like Bob Scott in local government.
I teach mostly local undergraduates and post grads who are trying to get the skills to be exactly the kind of people who could afford to live in the city centre and enjoy the sights and sounds of the entertainment complex being built there. Personally, I enjoy living in a city that is growing and full of new things: new restaurants and new bars, well stocked bakeries selling £5 sourdough and all that. I lived in West Didsbury and then Moss Side / Hulme (which I much preferred to Didsbury) and bought a house in Levenshulme with my wife. So, anyways, identity and sociological categories are on the table here.
What is key about Rose's argument, to me, isn't that neoliberal urban development won't lead to rising incomes tied to the boomtown economy or a generally more pleasant way of life for a good chunk of the population. It's that it creates a severe form of inequality that becomes more stark as some incomes increase and others are left behind. There are dozens of old working class, now "world-class", cities like this: Austin, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, etc. The only way to directly attack such inequality in terms of how much a portion of someone's income goes to landlords is to create social housing that is geared-to-income at a set rate, below market. I'm not an expert in UK housing policy or municipal government but it does seem like Rose's work on the planning committee suggests that foreign direct investment has been much more top of mind for the city council than social housing construction. Maybe the planning committee is to blame. Maybe the central government. Lots is going on.
The other key thing that I feel that this review sorta missed is this: value capture and wealth extraction. Boom towns _always_ grow due to foreign investment. That's the name of the game. The money has to come from somewhere and if the ground rent was cheap before redevelopment that means big money can come in and pocket a tidy profit in the process. After redevelopment, corporate landlords and other forms of outside capital _extract_ wealth from the local economy: local workers create value and it is then _moved_ away. So while the city benefits from lots of workers making more money than before and spending that locally at local businesses (clubs, £5 sourdough, nice bars), these are completely reliant on the workers' leftover income, and those businesses generally don't accumulate much capital for themselves at scale. This means that in the future there is a huge risk of a crash and a complete evacuation of capital, jobs, £5 sourdough, and housing development. This is exactly what happened to Manchester in the past during deindustrialization and depending on the next cyclical crisis of capitalism this city could once again not have much welfare state for those who are left.
I don't know how the council can fix this - but I do believe that a big chunk of what is good about the city will be found in local groups coming together to fight for the right to live affordably with dignity.
A good reminder for me to find my copy of Brett Christopher’s ‘Rentier Capitalism’ and give it that read I’ve been meaning to. I’d say you’re probably both correct, the development of Manchester has taken a form which has brought benefits but also drawbacks and I’m not sure to what extent this is inevitable. However I do think we have a very narrow view of what is achievable when it comes to political and economic choices particularly around housing. I think Isaac is onto something with respect to the asymmetry of power in this country w.r.t. land ownership and the forms of development which are permitted by capital and government in cahoots… at the end of the day, England is still a country where one of the richest men in the land received his wealth in almost direct ancestral lineage from the Norman Conquest, and new feudal lords in the form of pension funds and private equity is merely a changing of the guard rather than real radical reform. History punctuated with a brief period of emancipation post-war but reverting to the natural order, serfs, lords, bikes, range rovers…
I understand the complaint that regenerated areas are different now and the indigenous residents are inclined to resent the change and the ‘usually middle class’ newbies. Most people resist change but the problem in run down areas is that they are homogenous. The people who were born there and have ‘done alright’ for themselves have moved away. The resulting population haven’t got enough money to keep the shops open, or the buses running through the area or the swimming pool open. So there’s all sorts of property boarded up.
Unpopular as the idea might be these areas need diversification. There’s more money around so maybe it’s worth a bakery opening, or the local store having fresh fruit and veg etc. the schools have to smarten up their act, because the new parents will complain if their child’s reading book isn’t regularly changed etc
There must be a way different communities can benefit from what each brings. It been happening in London for ages. There are neighbourhoods with streets of terraced houses worth £ms a couple of minutes walk away from social housing apartments. Everybody goes to the local market and there are no boarded up shops. My dad always went to Harrods to get his paint and other materials (he was just an ordinary painter and decorator) - but he swore the service at Harrods was the best - they’d order anything you asked for, important if you had a fussy customer. What they can do down there we can do in Manchester - once we get used to the idea - can’t we?
Haven’t read the book yet but I found it very strange on the podcast that the author barely mentioned the long term constraints on local government in this country and the more recent and acute impact of austerity. Seems obvious to me that if councils can’t raise more tax and have their core grant cut this will limit their policy options in a whole bunch of areas. All large English cities have tried to increase their population and attract private investment to counter these constraints, it’s just Manchester has been more successful at it than most.
I'm a Mancunian, born in Hulme in a victorian slum in which I, my sister and my mam and dad all slept in one room. When I was 7 we were relocated to Wythenshawe and our slum was demolished, thankfully. Incidentally, that slum was owned by the C of E who were happy to take my dad's money on a weekly basis while we lived in squalor.
I've always loved visiting Manchester city centre and always will.
I recall in the late 60s early 70s the centre was beginning to decline and thankfully Tony Wilson started the ball rolling regarding the cultural rebirth of the city.
True to say that particular identity has faded somewhat with the demise of the Hacienda, but I still embrace the trajectory the city is following right now.
In my view the working class identity still dominates or at least plays a massive role in the persona of our city. Which is a good thing!
I now live in a semi rural area near Chester, but I'm a proud Mancunian 'til I die.
Ken, even though I too grew up in what would today be considered a 'slum' in Collyhurst ,although not in one room, I still have a fascination for the area. I wouldn't want to go back and live there, it would be too hard today , I've gone soft! I would, however, just like to walk the original streets and wonder how we managed it.
Manchester will always be my place , I'm rooted even though I live far away, those roots carry a long way.
I understand "slum" is perhaps a general term, but our 'two up-two down' had only 'one' up because the back bedroom was condemned as the floor wasn't stable. We had no hot water and only one cold tap in the scullery. The scullery had a cupboard, a belfast sink and a gas cooker. Me and my sister bathed once a week in a tin bath in front of a coal fire. The water was heated in white enamel buckets on the gas hob. The tin bath was hung on a nail in the yard most of the time. I don't have a clue where mam and dad went for a bath. There was only an outside toilet, but our crowded bedroom had a communal potty near the door which was usually brimming (number ones only!) and often had fag ends floating on the surface. But I was a happy kid.
Very similar Ken. I remember my parents used to go to Osborne St baths and wash house off Collyhurst Road for a bath. Mum also took the heavy washing there probably in the empty pram, which were huge in those days, that was used for the four of us as babies.
You just jogged my memory, Anne. Completely forgot about the public wash house. My vague recollection is that it was tiled, and kind of bawdy and noisy, all the women smiling and laughing and banter heavy.
I also just remembered that I woke up in the middle of the night once and said "Mam, there's bricks in my bed" She responded, half asleep, "It's just a dream you're alright" Anyway, next morning there were bricks in my bed. The internal wall had come away. No injuries, but I was covered in plaster and grit.
Good heavens Ken , grim.
The wash houses were mostly tiled from memory and the baths were in separate cubicles. I don't remember showers there, the only showers I saw were at Mersey Bank playing fields where we used to go by bus for games as my school was opposite Strangeways and only had a small yard.
Yes, Anne. I also attended the Manchester High School of Art. Fancy bumping into you here. I never used the showers. We got back on the bus muddy.
Thanks Ken, great story.
You essentially made this point yourself in the article but I struggle to engage with people like Isaac who have such a specific and narrow viewpoint given they have no interest in presenting realistic, viable alternatives to the one they have such an issue with.
To share a quote I’ve seen over the years in various forms, the problems of growth are far more preferable to the problems of decline.
This kind of great article is one of the reasons I subscribe to The Mill. Real analysis, examination of evidence, and serious debate focused on advancing understanding of a very important subject. Thank you!
Thanks Peter
You've finally hit the big-time Joshi -- Google news website!
Ooh excellent
“I can see why many people choose a faceless Bavarian pension fund over fielding aggressive WhatsApp messages from a coke-addicted landlord in Stockport.”
Joshi Herrmann riding his editorial chariot like Charlton Heston with a team of fiery white horses in hand. His course through Isaac Rose’s angry book seems carefully steered. Manchester is as Manchester does, and MCC’s brand of autocracy has been something of a tightrope act for decades.
Bob Scott is certainly a figure worth recalling. Alongside his Olympian endeavours, his relighting of two theatres (Palace and Opera House) co-creation of a third (Royal Exchange), he also chaired RNCM and founded Cornerhouse (along with Raymond Slater, chairman of construction company Norwest Holst). Isaac Rose has Bob Scott firmly on the dark side, Joshi Herrmann casts him in different light:
“To [Isaac Rose] a figure like Bob Scott is a figure of suspicion; to me, he reads like exactly the kind of person a dying city needs to have any chance of reviving itself”.
I was there, and I am firmly with Joshi.
To him, a figure like Bob Scott is a figure of suspicion; to me, he reads like exactly the kind of person a dying city needs to have any chance of reviving itself.
The recent Resolution Foundation report on Manchester and Birmingham was very revealing. If you take the UK’s most economically successful cities they have an economic geography that this guy would loath I.e. a big share of employment is in the core, they are absolute graduate magnets, and the income of residents goes up as you in from the periphery to centre (generally the opposite in GM).
So the whole worldview is like some giant counterfactual where we get more economically successful, but somehow escape these ‘neoliberal’ patterns of city development. It kind of reminds me of post-war greenbelt & new towns, and national industrial strategies where Birmingham was not allowed to build more car factories or commercial office space in the 1960’s because that kind of high value manufacturing related employment was to be used prop up other less fortunate places. We can see now that we just took our advantages and hobbled them, and nobody really gained in the long term from that.
A really fascinating article which, apart from your well-made points, introduced me to Bob Scott, who sounds like an extraordinary figure, looking at his Wikipedia entry. You've sold another copy of his memoir. He feels like someone who could have set up a hedge fund, but instead used his networking skills and business acumen to do exciting things for the public benefit here, and with the City of Culture in Liverpool. What an operator!
Oh didn't know he had a memoir. Never spoken to him but it does sound like he achieved an awful lot..
These views look authentically held, but feel like a false progressive NIMBY narrative. Most places in the UK, if they get their act together, and create economic opportunity are going to put their housing markets under a lot pressure, not least because grads will be retained and other people in the UK, perhaps ones with higher skills and incomes, will migrate there (which is a positive agglomeration effect). The key thing is to throw as much market rate and affordable housing in front of it as you can. GM does that in pockets, but not so much in aggregate. When I look at Deansgate Square I’m slightly torn, because I’m not sure it will turn out to be great urbanism, but what I do know is those are people with higher incomes and skills whose taxes and spending power have been retained within the city, and that gives MCC and Salford resources to help people who struggle (especially give both still own significant land). The counterfactual is to look at Nottingham and Birmingham siting on section 114’s and about to do horrible things to their own people. Looking ahead I do worry about the political spillover from the perfectly predictable effect on the GM donut, which you are seeing now in Stockport, but we’ll begin to see on the north side, and that will be a good thing, but we’ve seen how febrile and polarised some those places are.
Manchester since the early 1980’s has been a story of transformation and fabulous success. Obviously there is more to do, but the city has been going in the right direction and needs to continue.
I haven’t read the book and don’t intend to. However its proposition as summarised by the reviewer is politically motivated nonsense.
Interesting and thoughtful article. Couple of thoughts. Firstly, I would much rather have a corporate landlord (as is common, for instance in the private rented sector in Germany) than the mess of amateur landlords we have here.
Secondly, the link between additional housing and lower prices is tenuous. The FT article you linked to is behind a paywall, but I have seen it before, and it doesn't quote any real scientific evidence. The actual main determinants of house prices are economic activity (principally employment), the availability of finance both for individuals and corporate (this has been unusually freely available in the last decade, which has pushed house prices up), and the price of existing properties. This is not to say that new properties do not affect house prices at all, but the effect is very much overstated. Manchester needs new dwellings to cope with the increasing numbers of people who want to live or work in our fine city - but this will not affect affordability. If we want true affordability for lower paid workers and the economically inactive, then we just have to grit our teeth and build some genuine social housing.
Orwell agreed, back in the Road to Wigan Pier
"I found—one might expect it, perhaps—that the small landlords are usually the worst. It goes against the grain to say this, but one can see why it should be so. Ideally, the worst type of slum landlord is a fat wicked man, preferably a bishop, who is drawing an immense income from extortionate rents. Actually, it is a poor old woman who has invested her life’s savings in three slum houses, inhabits one of them, and tries to live on the rent of the other two—never, in consequence, having any money for repairs."
I think this issue might repay some more journalistic investigation from The Mill. It feels intuitively right that a corporate, maybe foreign landlord would be worse than a local person with a couple of houses. But the corporate landlord has an interest in a steady income, good standard of repairs to maintain asset value and decent tenant relations. The local landlord may be more interested in high returns, may not have access to responsive, high quality tradespeople, and we have all heard horror stories of landlord behaviour. There will be exceptions in both sectors, but I wonder if the generality holds?
Perhaps section 106 regs should be more ambitious to ensure more benefits of the city's boom are shared but undeniably Manchester is in better shape than 25 or 50 years ago. Absent new residential developments rents would be much higher. If Mr Rose wants to wallow in the nostalgia of the failed north he can get on any bus to any Lancashire mill town. My only gripe about "New Manchester" is the endless boosterism: "tallest" this and "biggest" that.
S106 is not the answer - & I write as a planner. First, development costs in the city will always be high, so there may be little or no money to divert. Second, there are many competing demands for S106 cash. More for social housing might means less for schools and new surgeries, etc., that new devt needs. And 3rd, developers are expert at gaming the S106 system to reduce the amount they pay.
I don't think there is any evidence that without the new flats that rents would be higher. It's much more likely that the city centre economy would be much smaller.
s.106 is about the development rather than the ownership afterwards.
I feel compelled to push back on the "fat, wicked landlord" stereotype. I own a handful of properties around Tameside. Call me amateur if you must but the flats are all professionally managed by an agent who takes 8% / month. They carry out an inspection every 6 months, arrange all repairs using tradesmen who get a steady stream of work, so tend to be reliable, or risk losing the gig.
Most of my tenants are long term and I've kept rent increases below inflation for the last 4 years. On the flip side, I had one tenant who, during the pandemic, quit his job, and stopped paying rent knowing he couldn't be evicted. One year on, he left, having trashed the place and leaving me to clean up the mess. Literally.
I'd like to think I'm better than some faceless foreign investor who's only interest is raking in as much profit as possible.
I don't think anyone would say there are not good small landlords, and you sound like one. But there are a lot of horror stories from small landlords too. But all this is anecdotal. The real question for public policy is whether an army of small landlords is a better way of providing housing than other models, including institutional owners, or registered social landlords, or even councils.
I don't disagree Peter. But I do get fed up with the adjective "slum" being used so frequently. Of course, we only hear the horror stories, they make much better headlines. My flats are my pension and my future legacy so I've got just as much interest as a corporate entity in keeping them in good condition.
Great that we agree! I suspect we would also agree that the word 'slum' has so much baggage that it has lost all meaning (Mill journalists note). But while I understand why you are a landlord, we do seriously need to question how we got to a point where society has commodified and fetishised housing as investment rather than a place to live.
The quote is from the road to Wigan Pier, written in the 30s when there certainly were slums, the book is quite explicit on the conditions then. And he was praising the 'fat wicked' landlord as the good one...
The data from the US suggests places that built a lot of market rate housing by changing their zoning practices, like Minneapolis, have seen much better affordability than other Midwest places that didn’t, but yes we need more social housing.
I'm not saying this is wrong, but is there a link to a scientific paper you could let us have? Almost everything I have seen is anecdote or opinion. It feels right that more housing = lower prices. But I just don't think there is any real evidence to support it.
Everything I came here to say has been said, so just to reinforce the key sentiment: another cracking piece. Your honesty about your own discomfort in writing it is really welcome.
Interesting piece Joshi , but rather perplexed by your comment on Man City as I thought you were a Red?!
Several people (including Mollie) have accused me of anti-City bias so this was an olive branch to the Blue Millers Supporters' Club.
Yes, I found that strange too. Now that he's been up for a few years Joshi must have seen the error of his ways. More joy in heaven over a sinner that repents etc.
Hahahaha
A really interesting article Joshi and a subject of which I've been tiptoeing around the margins for a while. The only experiences I've had of living in Manchester are from my parents generation of renting, privately and then a council house . They bought a house much later on in life , my Dad was 50 or so and I'd left home by then to move away.
I'm looking in at this point ,not having to experience the ups and downs of city living but feel the present social housing model just doesn't seem to work very well as far as looking after tenants goes ,from what I've read. Am I wrong in that assumption? Was the old council model superior ? I'm too far removed really to have absolute clarity but I'm interested to know.
I'll be interested also to read what others have to say.
I'd like to comment on this story but every time I try, I get lost in the mysteries of Substack ...
What I want to say, lately returned to Manchester, is that I am depressed by the gap between the grand talk and soaring skyline and the squalor at street level. If all that investment does not get the streets swept, never mind meeting housing need, what is the point? If I saw another European city like it I would not be going back, pardon my pickiness.
I totally agree. From a distance Manchester city centre looks great, but down at street level, you realise what a cesspit it is, with litter and rubbish everywhere. God know what visitors think because I as a Mancunian am embarrassed at the state of our streets.
I dread to think what my nearest city Birmingham will look like after the council cuts get to work ...or more to the point won't get to work because street cleaning won't be a priority. We have to have pride of place though for where we live/work and bring our children up .
This isn’t a terribly substantial comment but here goes……..
I will now get and read The Rentier City because it sounds interesting and I’m struck by your responses to the content of the book as you describe it but……..
I think your piece is less a review of The Rentier City than it is an assault on the theses of the book.
Could all get a bit circular but I feel that Isaac Rose should have a right to reply to your review…..or at least an opportunity to have a go back, via The Mill, at some of your arguments.
Haha, a never ending dialogue. If you listen to the podcast you will hear me raise some of these points and how Isaac responds.
I’ll get on to that Joshi. All the best!
Ha! Denis Mooney. Still out there in the rolling hills of Derbyshire? Love to you. Pg
Hi Phil,
It became too much of a blue wall.
Been back in Alty a while now!
X
I guess I should preface this comment by saying that I am friends with Rose - and a big fan of his work. I'm also _structurally_ a part of the influx of outsiders into the city: I'm a Canadian academic who works as a senior lecturer in the Sociology department at Manchester Metropolitan. I research the digital spatialization and political economy of cultural and media industries, the very thing that Manchester continues to dine out on so many years on since the Hacienda. And it’s obviously key to the story of Manchester’s redevelopment: as evidenced by the importance of a theatre personality like Bob Scott in local government.
I teach mostly local undergraduates and post grads who are trying to get the skills to be exactly the kind of people who could afford to live in the city centre and enjoy the sights and sounds of the entertainment complex being built there. Personally, I enjoy living in a city that is growing and full of new things: new restaurants and new bars, well stocked bakeries selling £5 sourdough and all that. I lived in West Didsbury and then Moss Side / Hulme (which I much preferred to Didsbury) and bought a house in Levenshulme with my wife. So, anyways, identity and sociological categories are on the table here.
What is key about Rose's argument, to me, isn't that neoliberal urban development won't lead to rising incomes tied to the boomtown economy or a generally more pleasant way of life for a good chunk of the population. It's that it creates a severe form of inequality that becomes more stark as some incomes increase and others are left behind. There are dozens of old working class, now "world-class", cities like this: Austin, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, etc. The only way to directly attack such inequality in terms of how much a portion of someone's income goes to landlords is to create social housing that is geared-to-income at a set rate, below market. I'm not an expert in UK housing policy or municipal government but it does seem like Rose's work on the planning committee suggests that foreign direct investment has been much more top of mind for the city council than social housing construction. Maybe the planning committee is to blame. Maybe the central government. Lots is going on.
The other key thing that I feel that this review sorta missed is this: value capture and wealth extraction. Boom towns _always_ grow due to foreign investment. That's the name of the game. The money has to come from somewhere and if the ground rent was cheap before redevelopment that means big money can come in and pocket a tidy profit in the process. After redevelopment, corporate landlords and other forms of outside capital _extract_ wealth from the local economy: local workers create value and it is then _moved_ away. So while the city benefits from lots of workers making more money than before and spending that locally at local businesses (clubs, £5 sourdough, nice bars), these are completely reliant on the workers' leftover income, and those businesses generally don't accumulate much capital for themselves at scale. This means that in the future there is a huge risk of a crash and a complete evacuation of capital, jobs, £5 sourdough, and housing development. This is exactly what happened to Manchester in the past during deindustrialization and depending on the next cyclical crisis of capitalism this city could once again not have much welfare state for those who are left.
I don't know how the council can fix this - but I do believe that a big chunk of what is good about the city will be found in local groups coming together to fight for the right to live affordably with dignity.
A good reminder for me to find my copy of Brett Christopher’s ‘Rentier Capitalism’ and give it that read I’ve been meaning to. I’d say you’re probably both correct, the development of Manchester has taken a form which has brought benefits but also drawbacks and I’m not sure to what extent this is inevitable. However I do think we have a very narrow view of what is achievable when it comes to political and economic choices particularly around housing. I think Isaac is onto something with respect to the asymmetry of power in this country w.r.t. land ownership and the forms of development which are permitted by capital and government in cahoots… at the end of the day, England is still a country where one of the richest men in the land received his wealth in almost direct ancestral lineage from the Norman Conquest, and new feudal lords in the form of pension funds and private equity is merely a changing of the guard rather than real radical reform. History punctuated with a brief period of emancipation post-war but reverting to the natural order, serfs, lords, bikes, range rovers…
I understand the complaint that regenerated areas are different now and the indigenous residents are inclined to resent the change and the ‘usually middle class’ newbies. Most people resist change but the problem in run down areas is that they are homogenous. The people who were born there and have ‘done alright’ for themselves have moved away. The resulting population haven’t got enough money to keep the shops open, or the buses running through the area or the swimming pool open. So there’s all sorts of property boarded up.
Unpopular as the idea might be these areas need diversification. There’s more money around so maybe it’s worth a bakery opening, or the local store having fresh fruit and veg etc. the schools have to smarten up their act, because the new parents will complain if their child’s reading book isn’t regularly changed etc
There must be a way different communities can benefit from what each brings. It been happening in London for ages. There are neighbourhoods with streets of terraced houses worth £ms a couple of minutes walk away from social housing apartments. Everybody goes to the local market and there are no boarded up shops. My dad always went to Harrods to get his paint and other materials (he was just an ordinary painter and decorator) - but he swore the service at Harrods was the best - they’d order anything you asked for, important if you had a fussy customer. What they can do down there we can do in Manchester - once we get used to the idea - can’t we?