From Tenure to Rights: Conceptualizing the Changing Focus of Housing Law in England

Abstract

This paper suggests a new way of conceptualizing tenure as a series of discourses that comprise respectively: (a) property law; (b) housing policy; and (c) housing status. Housing research has generally focused on housing policy discourse in a way that obscures legal relationships. In contrast, a focus on property and housing status has greater potential to make explicit the rights and obligations that arise in different situations. The ?bundle of rights? view provides the most acceptable statement of tenure relations in housing. It is the only view that covers both property and housing status and that can also make sense of tendencies towards juridification. The implication for research is to focus on the exact terms of rights, their changing distribution between different parties and their scope for enforcement. If research extends to a review of the origins and continuing rationale of rights, some form of narrative analysis is usually necessary.