Humphry, Debbie (2019) Constructing the Self-responsible Tenant In Times of Austerity Neoliberalism Post-Olympics East Village, London. In: 7th EUGEO Congress on the Geography of Europe; 15-18 May 2019, Galway, Ireland. (Unpublished)
Abstract
Access to affordable, secure and safe housing is increasingly challenging in many European cities including Dublin and London, met with substantial academic critique and housing activism. This paper contributes to these critical voices with a paper analyzing a case study of the post-Olympics mixed-tenure East Village in London, UK. The paper examines how social tenants’ experiences are shaped by new forms of neoliberalism embedded into social housing provision. Drawing on allocations policy documents and qualitative interviews with residents, the paper explores housing providers’ management strategies to argue that the East Village case suggests a shift in social housing provision away from patterns of residualisation, as the beneficiaries are more self-reliant tenants rather than those most in housing need. By situating residents’ experiences within wider political discourses of neoliberalism and welfare austerity, this paper explores how far East Village is a special case or indicative of broader trends in UK or European social housing provision. It is argued that the housing provider’s financial responsibilisation and contractual strategies aim to construct tenants with enhanced consumer identities, which works to shift risks from landlord to tenants in the wider context that housing providers themselves face increased financial risks. This paper makes a unique contribution as there is limited research on East Village from the perspective of residents’ lived experiences. The paper will be of interest to scholars on housing, mixed communities, regeneration and Post-Olympics developments.
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