Tenant-led policy solutions to the UK housing crisis

This project will examine the impacts of resident participation in social housing governance upon local
communities past and present, and will record and track impacts of such resident involvement on
policymaking. The research will be designed to examine whether involvement of residents from minority
and vulnerable groups in housing governance can challenge the stigmatisation of social housing which
began in the 1970s and 1980s, of particular importance if affordable rented housing is to become a
housing policy solution for the UK housing crisis.
Qualitative research methods comprising focus groups and oral histories will be used to understand
individual and collective experiences of participation, and to investigate whether marginalised groups
face barriers to participation in social housing and its democratic spaces. Data will be examined using
Laclau and Mouffe's (1985) discourse analysis, enabling the consideration of a diversity of emerging
narratives, and the ways in which individual experiences feed into democratic social movements.
The project will interrogate the interrelationship between cultures of tenant participation in social
housing, with the development of economically sustainable communities in two case study locations,
Brighton & Hove and Portsmouth. Particular focus will be placed on scalability: of innovations in tenant
democracy for a large social democratic programme of council house building, and the unique challenges
for expansion of affordable rented housing in two coastal locations limited by topography.