The Social Construction of Housing Management Discourse: Objectivity, Rationality and Everyday Practice

Abstract

This paper explores the ways in which housing management is socially constructed as bureaucratic reality. Housing management is the function in local authorities and housing associations that provides and manages subsidized rented housing. Increasingly, public housing is taken up by people dependent on welfare benefits who cannot afford any other form of tenure. As a result, housing staff have to take on a welfare role that sometimes gets blurred with that provided by other welfare agencies. At the same time, cuts in budgets and subsidies available to housing organizations means that public housing is a scarce resource that has to be rationed. This process of rationing is usually based on a system that prioritizes people's housing needs. These needs are defined and determined differently by different housing organizations. Similarly, the provision of social housing is allocated differently by different organizations. However, a dominant discourse within housing management and other welfare bureaucracies i...