Between House and Home

Renovations Labor and the Production of Residential Value

Bibliographic Data

ID4041960
AuthorsM Buckley (0000-0003-4742-1796, University of Toronto, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume95
Issue3
Pages209-230
Publication date2019-05-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEconomic Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0095 • E-ISSN: 1944-8287
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00130095.2018.1526073
OpenAlexW2902768033
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited65

In 2014, spending on home renovations across Canada outstripped spending on actual home purchases. In this article, I explore this rise in renovations spending through a case study of these dynamics in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), a metropolitan region that has experienced extraordinary growth in both house prices and levels of household mortgage debt over the last decade. While cheap mortgage debt has often been considered a key factor facilitating housing exchange and speculation in recent decades, I highlight the significant role that informalized renovations labor has played in these housing market dynamics across the GTA. Combining secondary data on GTA housing sales and renovations activity with in-depth interviews with precarious renovations workers, I contend that renovating has been a key strategy to overcome the crisis of affordability produced by low-interest mortgage debt. Highlighting the central role of renovations labor in reproducing the home as a commodity with either new use or exchange values, I recast strategies of asset wealth-building and house buying in the GTA as ones highly reliant on de-skilled and informalized noncitizen renovations labor. Informed by intersectional feminist scholarship on paid but precarious labor in the home, I offer a partial perspective on the fundamental importance of precarious renovations labor to the political economy of private homeownership

Asset (computer security) · Business · Commodity · Consumer spending · Debt · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Household debt · Labour economics · Market economy · Metropolitan area · Production (economics) · Recession · Scholarship · Speculation · Value (mathematics) · Finance · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Political and Economic history of UK and US

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub