Rent gap governance

Abstract

While gentrification in some contexts has been analysed as a profit-driven process best explained by the rent gap, state governance, e.g. through social mixing, has elsewhere been seen as the main driver of this urban process. With the concept of rent gap governance, the aim of this article is to show that profit and governance can be mutually constitutive parts of gentrification in the neoliberal city. Even when gentrification is a political premise, the rent gap can remain important, but its formation and closure might be unconventional. Empirically, the article centres on Denmark’s 2018 ‘Ghetto Law’, a social-mix policy aiming to govern a racialized surplus population by reducing non-profit housing in stigmatized areas through privatization of housing and land and new-build. Building on recent elaborations of rent gap theory, I suggest three mechanisms for rent gap governance in the Danish case: increased potential rent, depressed ground rent, and subsidized and envisioned rent gaps. I ground this model with a case study of the sale of the non-profit housing complex Schackenborgvænge. I analyse rarely-available qualitative and quantitative data and consider the immediate social consequences of the sale. The result is a murky picture of localized rent gap governance.

Keywords:

• social mix
• rent gap
• gentrification
• governance
• ghetto
• territorial stigmatization

Acknowledgements

I am thankful to participants in the Urbana Papillon research network at Roskilde University and to the two anonymous reviewers for helpful and encouraging comments on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This research was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Roskilde University.

2 Nordicals and EDC use the following assessment model: Property corrections. I.e. the higher the income (and lower the expenses), the higher the property price; the higher the capitalization rate, the lower the property price and, other things equal, the higher the return for the investor.

3 Based on 2020 data (Statistics Denmark 2021) with an assumed 3.56% 2021 increase.

4 Based on the landlord’s estimated water and heating costs of 1100 DKK/month for a 3-bedroom apartment, and my deduced estimate of 1000 DKK/month for a 2-bedroom apartment, and an electricity usage of 267 kWh/month (typical 2-person usage) at 2.40 DKK/kWh.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Carlsberg Foundation [Grant Number CF20-0373].

Notes on contributors

Bjarke Skærlund Risager

Bjarke Skærlund Risager is a postdoctoral researcher in the Space, Place, Mobility and Urban Studies (MOSPUS) research group, Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University. His Carlsberg Foundation Reintegration Fellowship (grant no.: CF20-0373) funded this research. E-mail: [email protected]