Tim J. Brown

The Power to Choose: Effective Choice and Housing Policy

ABSTRACT This paper considers the current importance of choice as a concept in English housing policy. A key aim in extending choice is to empower the users of public services. The paper concentrates on the policy of choice-based lettings. We show how this is linked both to a wider policy debate in England regarding choice and to initiatives in other European countries, in this case the Netherlands. We then discuss the policy of choice-based lettings as it has been and is being implemented in English social housing. The paper goes on to discuss choice as a concept, with particular relation to rational choice. The view we develop is that choice has to be related to the capability to act and this is done through the concept of effective choice, which connects choice with access to resources. The final part of the paper offers an evaluation of choice-based lettings and its purported ability to empower users of social housing.

Whatever Happened to 'Housing and the Environment'?

This paper takes stock of the housing and environment debate and argues that much of the optimism of the early 1990s has declined. Our own work is reviewed as an example of the limits of previous approaches to analysing contemporary housing and environmental issues. There appears to be a paradox in that housing organisations are now much more environmentally aware; many are developing green housing projects, and yet the development of theory has lagged behind. It is argued that the analysis of environmental issues in housing studies needs to be strongly linked to wider debates and cross-cutting themes such as social and economic sustainability, social integration and fair competition in the context of globalisation.

Allocations and Lettings - Taking Customer Choice Forward in England?

ABSTRACT A step change has taken place in allocations policy in England with the recent adoption of choice-based letting (CBL). This centres on a customer-oriented approach with households responding to adverts. It requires the customer to indicate preferences based on social housing market information as opposed to landlords dictating an offer of a vacant property based on a measure of need. Innovative schemes by social housing organizations in the late 1990s provided the foundation for subsequent endorsement by the government. There have been many reasons for its adoption, including a greater customer orientation, tackling low demand, building sustainable neighbourhoods and improving organizational efficiency. Initial evaluation suggests positive benefits from the customer perspective of the lettings process (e.g. transparency), compared with traditional bureaucratic rationing systems. Nevertheless, there have been concerns on, for example, the impact on vulnerable groups and the extent to which CBL contributes to sustainable communities. More fundamentally, CBL operates within the constraints of national policy and local housing markets. It radically alters the allocations process but by itself it cannot rebalance high and low demand housing markets.