Housing Associations - Models of Social Enterprise or Agents of the State?

Abstract

As I came to review the final draft of this paper two events provided cause for further reflection on the nature of what is being reviewed here. Firstly, the conclusion of the transfer of the remaining 15,500 Liverpool City Council housing stock to a newly formed housing association: Liverpool Mutual Homes. Then one of Eastenders’ lead characters spoke with a real sense of familiarity, of the problems he might have with ‘the housing association’ when she takes in a friends family as lodgers. Delete ‘housing association’ and insert ‘council’ to picture the same script from only 3-4 years ago. Not quite as significant an event as that at Liverpool, but one that seems to capture some of the social changes involved: popular culture has caught up with certain policy developments