Translating English to American: the housing dictionary
“England and America are two countries separated by a common language.”
“And it takes an egocentric expatriate Irishman to tell them so.”
Aside from my ongoing enormous affection for the UK and all things English, I’ve spent quite some time both studying their housing finance ecosystem and proposing additions thereto such as tax credits and possibly rethinking their approach to greenfield — with more success in the former endeavors than the latter.
In September I hosted the Boston half of a four-day UK study tour (Washington being the other destination), and I just returned from the UK after a brief holiday (vacation) navigating the roundabouts (rotaries) in our hired (rented) car, that followed my participation in a Tuesday-morning symposium on affordable housing innovations held at 11 Downing Street (about which more in a subsequent post) — and if I was to be useful, I needed to be understood — meaning speaking English, not American.
Yet much though there are many slang dictionaries (English to American, American to Australian), I’ve never found one specifically for our special subject.
“My special subject — the domestic industries of Brabant in the fifteenth century.” — Hedda Gabler
Well, look no further, for here it is, sorted by the mother country:
Particularly interesting in a language are the words it lacks (the French have no word for ‘warm’), and I call to your attention the Americanism ‘affordable housing’. As I’ve discussed many times, this form — privately owned, publicly regulated, financed mainly with capital incentives, professionally managed — although predominant in the
Aside from my advocacy of tax credits for the UK, I strongly favor the thickening of an affordable housing sector in the UK marketplace, by whatever means the UK possesses, with whatever tools, and via whatever sponsors — most likely the large, sophisticated, first-rank housing associations who are leading change in the UK housing finance ecosystem.
The reason relates to the second highlighted term — buy-to-let. We don’t have this as a distinctive term in the
Be sure to read the risk factors … if you can find them!
By itself, this is fine and entirely understandable, but it means:
· Further upward pressure on home prices.
· Stunting the emergence of a professional rental sector, with consequent labor immobility.
Lest the reader infer this is simply a celebration of the American ecosystem, I’ll finish with a third and fourth Anglicism: shared ownership and stock transfer. Shared ownership deserves its own post, as the concept — which has no American analog — is a particular means of creating temporarily-affordable-rental, and is thus a positive innovation worth study.
Stock transfer is more straightforward: if the residents of a local authority’s property vote by majority plebiscite, they in effect deed themselves from the local authority to a chosen housing association, at no cost. It’s a one-way resident-controlled change of landlord and partial privatization all rolled into one.
More on this very nifty idea in a future post.
Finally, we also offer our original list, re-sorted by American:
Readers English, American, or merely confused, are invited to send us other terms for addition to this specialized glossary.
