Delivering Social Housing: Examining the Nexus between Social Housing and Democratic Planning

Abstract

The construction of social housing in gentrifying neighbourhoods can ignite contestation, revealing tensions between economic imperatives, social policy and neighbourhood change. With a view to understanding how the convergence of these agendas preserve unpopular, but socially critical housing infrastructure, the aim of this paper is to explore how the challenges social housing implementation encounters across these agendas intersect with a broader agenda for local democratic planning. Using social housing as our empirical focus and directing attention to the gentrifying local government area of Port Phillip in Victoria, Australia, this paper reveals how a council’s main asset to support implementation – its policy frameworks – creates an urban narrative of social inclusivity and diversity. Through this case, we illustrate how elected officials and some residents draw from these policies to interject into episodes of community contestation, which we argue presents opportunities to expose and renew commitments to social housing over space and time.

Key words:

• Local government
• Housing policy
• Democratic planning
• Social housing

Acknowledgements

The results presented in this paper are from an Australian Research Housing Institute funded project (project number 71007), which led to the 2013 report titled “Understanding and addressing community opposition to affordable housing development”. An earlier version of this paper was present at the European Network for Housing Research Conference in Lisbon in 2015.