Regulating marginality: how the media characterises a maligned housing option

ABSTRACT

Communities often stigmatise forms of housing targeting low-income tenants. This paper examines how media sources characterise one such form: rooming houses that provide multiple, low-cost, single-room accommodations in structures with shared bathrooms and/or kitchens. By analysing newspaper and online media coverage in Halifax, Canada, we illustrate the way the media describe the rooming house as a risky structure and its occupants as dangerous and marginalised persons requiring surveillance and regulation. Media coverage can play an important role in creating the social context within which local government fashions planning and housing policy interventions to control the size, location, and operation of unpopular housing options. In cities where market pressures drive gentrification, negative media coverage can contribute to the on-going loss of such affordable housing opportunities.

KEYWORDS:

• Rooming house
• marginality
• regulation
• media
• planning

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Uytae Lee for his research assistance. The authors acknowledge the support provided by the Neighbourhood Change Research Partnership.

Notes

1. Depending on time and place, the rooming house may be known as a lodging house, boarding house, residential hotel, house in multiple occupation, or single-room occupancy.

2. The list of articles analysed is available in Derksen (2016). Duplicate textual content appeared under other titles in various editions of a media source in 11 instances.

3. Media stories identified as evidence sources are not included in the reference list, but the full titles are available in Derksen (2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 895-2011-1004].