Promoting Responsibility, Shaping Behaviour: Housing Management, Mixed Communities and the Construction of Citizenship

Abstract

This paper examines housing policies aimed at establishing mixed income communities. Based on stakeholder interviews and case study analysis in England and Scotland, the paper pays particular attention to the impact of interventions in housing management. The first part considers the policy context for mixed communities and considers the conceptual basis underlying contemporary housing management through discourses of culture and social control. The second part considers how this agenda has resulted in the adoption of intensive management strategies within mixed communities; illustrated in the development of allocation policies, initiatives designed to tackle anti-social behaviour, and proposals to develop sustainable communities. The main argument is that given that the concept of mixed communities is based on the premise of social housing failure, citizenship has been defined largely in response to private sector interests. This approach to management has been a contributory factor in the construction of social housing as a form of second-class citizenship.

Keywords:

• Mixed communities
• management
• culture
• control
• sustainability

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Nick Bailey, Anna Haworth and Marion Roberts for the original research on which the paper is partly based. Thanks are also due to the editors of Housing Studies and three anonymous referees for their constructive criticisms on the original submission of this paper.