Community Ownership of Social Housing in

Glasgow: empowering Glasgow’s tenants?

Dr Kim McKeeCentre for Housing Research, School of Geography

& Geosciences, University of St Andrews

Draws on research from my ESRC funded PhD research (2004-2007) and a small follow-up study funded by BA (2008)

The research adopts a qualitative case study approach to highlight that far from realising ambitions for enhanced local control through community ownership, housing governance in Glasgow post-stock transfer is characterised by difficult centre-local relations; delays and complexities in delivering the goal of further secondary transfers; and a notable lack of support, and indeed, interest amongst lay tenants

Aims and Objectives

SE endeavoured to modernise social housing in Scotland through Community Ownership

Revive HP that enjoyed much success: that of CO neighbourhood transfers

Underpinning community ownership is a desire to secure significant additional housing investment whilst also facilitating tenant empowerment

No where was the desire and need for change stronger than in Scotland’s largest and most problematic city: Glasgow

In 2003, GCC transferred all its council housing:◦ Model of delegated management through LHO network◦ Commitment to further, smaller stock transfers

Housing Policy Context

Views of ‘ordinary tenants’ in the Glasgow transfer process have been largely neglected

BA study based on focus groups with GHA tenants. Oct-Nov 2008, six FGS were held with lay tenants: 34 participants in total, plus two semi-structured interviews

Follow up to doctoral research (2004-2007): range qualitative methods

Glasgow housing stock transfer is a unique policy vehicle in both the Scottish and UK context. However as Mitchell stresses, in qualitative research the ‘cogency of the theoretical reasoning’ matters most when making the creative link from the one to the many – not typicality (1983: 207)

The Research

Delegated management has delivered improved local control through LHO structure

Benefits for those not involved in the LHO committees less clear◦ More opportunities to get involved, but DM process did not

always take their views into account. Also budgetary limits. GHA demonstrates a classic centre-periphery

divide. Manifest in tense central-local relations (between the LHO and the GHA)

This internal conflict has frustrated LHO actors, who accuse the GHA of having ‘centralising’ tendencies and question their commitment to CO

Centre-Local Tensions

Centre-local tensions are also evident outwith the GHA in the wider HA operating environment

Paralleling the situation between the GHA and the LHOs what emerges here is a fundamental clash of priorities between HA’s and central gvt

Importance of RSL Performance Standards and Regulation and Inspection regime

Foster homogeneity and may actually stifle creativity and local innovation

This recentralisation of power is not restricted to housing, but also present in other aspects of welfare reform

Centre-Local Tensions II

Failure to deliver ‘full’ CO has been identified by key actors as a major failure of the transfer f/work

Practical financial and organisational barriers have emerged to frustrate buyer (LHOs) and seller (GHA)

Yet as previous studies have indicated, what is important to tenants is not primarily who owns the housing, but their ability to exert influence & control

Differences in scale between past and present models of CO (i.e. LSVT v n/hood transfers)

Financial considerations given overwhelming priority in realising ambitions for CO

Even when LHOs realise CO, still not fully autonomous

Community Ownership: inherently flawed?

Majority FG participants not heard of SST before Even those that had, were unsure what it meant

and how it would affect future service delivery Unlike the architects of the transfer f/work they

did not believe emp and ownership were necessarily synonymous

None of the participants in either of the studies identified emp/participation/involvement/CO (or any variation of these labels) as important at the point of transfer: emphasised more tangible, practical goals

SST and ‘Ordinary Tenants’

Transfer framework assumes that reconfiguring housing governance is sufficient to modernise social housing

Ignores the very real structural factors within society, which shaped the lived experience of social housing

Limits to what housing policy can achieve Problems associated with the citizen-consumer

discourse◦ Propogates an inidvidualising pathology ◦ Conditional form of citizenship

Structure v Agency

ST has delivered positive gains in local control for Glasgow BUT◦ Central-local tensions persist◦ Problems in delivering CO via SST◦ Ambivalence about SST amongst tenants◦ Lack of attention to wider structural factors◦ Emphasis on community-asset ownership ignores

the constraints and challenges of the RSL operating environment.

Conclusions