Two steps forward for tenants?

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Abstract
This chapter attempts to go beyond the current rhetoric of tenants’ participation which assumes that it is a panacea for the problems of social housing, empowering tenants and improving their lifestyles, acting as a cost-saving management tool for local authorities, aiding estate regeneration and reducing crime: “... Government seeks to empower people as stakeholders to maximise effectiveness, efficiency and access, to strengthen communities, create stability and sustainability” (Armstrong, 1999, p 125). We focus on the impact of the policy on tenants both collectively and individually, and discuss whether participation does enable them to gain a level of control over their housing. Tenant participation is located as one possible element of ‘voice’, Hirschman’s (1970) intermediate means of communication, through which tenants can articulate their concerns. It needs to be seen as an alternative rather than a substitute for political, economic or legal rights that could provide what Hirschman terms ‘exit’ in a market model. We conclude that while tenant participation has the potential to be developed into a more effective tool to aid efficient housing management and benefit some stakeholders in social housing, tenants can only achieve the sort of empowerment giving them real control over their housing consumption by an appropriate balance between participation, protest/political action and effective legal remedies. Other stakeholders in social housing may have little interest in tenants having access to these alternative forms of accountability in social housing.

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