Contractual Welfare Ideology and Housing Management Practice ...

W07 – Housing Regeneration and Maintenance
Contractual Welfare Ideology and Housing Management
Practice: The Deployment of ‘Tenant Incentive Schemes’
in Australia.
Keith Jacobs

ENHR Conference Rotterdam June 2008
Contractual Welfare Ideology and Housing Management
Practice: The Deployment of ‘Tenant Incentive Schemes’ in
Abstract
Australia.
Keith Jacobs
University of Tasmania, Australia.
Tenant Incentive Schemes (TIS) is the generic term used to describe an additional tier
of benefits such as rent subsidies and accelerated repair schemes made available
specifically to tenants who meet the conditions of their tenancy agreement. This paper
is based on the findings of research study that examined the deployment of Tenant
Incentive Schemes in Australia. It is argued that TIS, along with other similar housing
management practices, are underpinned by a set of neo-liberal ideological discourses
and that their promotion by policy makers is symptomatic of the move towards
contractual forms of welfare delivery (the idea that entitlement is dependent on
certain conditions relating to behaviour). The paper’s conclusion is that while TIS and
other similar schemes might lead to some incremental improvements, they overemphasise
the transformative potential of welfare contractualism to assuage the
negative impact of residualisation and neighbourhood decline. TIS are insufficient
policy instruments to meet the contemporary challenges that confront the agencies
managing public housing.
Introduction
In recent years there has been considerable interest in the development of
management schemes that reward public housing tenants who meet their tenancy
obligations by offering an additional tier of benefits to those normally supplied by the
landlord. The generic term to describe these schemes is ‘Tenant Incentive Schemes’
(TIS), and their benefits include rent subsidies, accelerated repair and maintenance
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services, and shopping and insurance discounts. TIS have been proclaimed by their
advocates as a major factor in the improvements achieved by housing organisations in
the area of rent collection, anti-social behaviour, tenant satisfaction and void turnover.
Their apparent attraction for state housing agencies is that they seem to offer a
mechanism to reward tenants who adhere to the conditions of their tenancy (i.e. pay
their rent on time, act as considerate neighbours and look after their property) as well
as an incentive for recalcitrant tenants who have not. 1 In this respect, TIS are a form
of welfare contractualism (Deacon, 2004; White 2000) in that entitlements for some
housing services are contingent on recipients fulfilling certain obligations.
However, despite these proclaimed benefits, TIS, along with other similar housing
management practices are underpinned by a set of neo-liberal ideological discourses
and that their promotion by policy makers is symptomatic of the move towards
contractual forms of welfare delivery (the idea that entitlement is dependent on
certain conditions relating to behaviour). While TIS and other similar schemes might
lead to some incremental improvements, they over-emphasise the transformative
potential of welfare contractualism to assuage the negative impact of residualisation
and neighbourhood decline. TIS are insufficient policy instruments to meet the
contemporary challenges that confront the agencies managing social housing.
In Australia the difficulties that confront state housing managers have increased
substantially. Not only are state housing organisations required to accommodate large
numbers of tenants with complex welfare needs but the financial resources available
for organisations to improve services remain tightly controlled. As a response to this
predicament, many Australian state housing authorities 2 have initiated new policies to
address the challenges that arise, such as the establishment of mixed development
schemes, tenant participation projects, anti-social behaviour policies and housing
renewal programmes. Tenant Incentive Schemes (TIS) can be viewed as one of the
latest of these innovations which can improve the quality of life for households
residing in public housing 3 . The interest in TIS by Australian housing authorities
1 TIS are predicated on the assumption that recalcitrant tenants will change their behaviour in order to
receive entitlements that are received by the majority of tenants.
2
Unlike in the UK, public housing in Australia is administered by State and Territory authorities not by
local government authorities.
3
The paper’s focus is on schemes for rewarding existing tenants similar to the model developed by
Irwell Valley Housing Association in the UK. It does not address other policies (also referred to as
2

stems primarily from their promotion by the Manchester, UK based social housing
landlord Irwell Valley Housing Association (IVHA) whose TIS scheme is known as
‘Gold Star’. As many as 40 UK housing organisations, and a small number of bodies
in the Netherlands, have adopted similar schemes (Housing Today, 2003). In addition
to IVHA’s ‘Gold Star’, other examples of TIS have been established in the UK
including rent discounts, accelerated repair schedules, shopping and leisure centre
vouchers and content insurance subsidies.
Contextualising TIS
An important task in any discussion of TIS is to situate it in a broad ideological
context, for example the extent to which TIS are a manifestation of some of the
existing discourses shaping contemporary governance. In taking this approach, we
drew upon the arguments developed by Rose (1999 and 2001 Flint (2003, 2004 and
2006) and Flint and Nixon (2006). All of these writers emphasise how contemporary
government agencies rely on ideological discourses to reconfigure the state’s
relationship with its subjects - for example, the stress now placed upon selfresponsibility
over and above economic or structural interventions. Nikolas Rose
(1999, 2001) has situated these developments within neo-liberal governmentality and
he deploys the term ‘ethopower’ to signify how they operate as a technology for
government agencies to pursue their agendas. He suggests that much of contemporary
government policy making in the realm of welfare is concerned with establishing a
new moral framework to encourage self-regulation and civic responsibility. Clearly
his arguments have utility for the discussion of TIS but other texts were also useful.
For example, the interpretations of housing management practice already set out by
writers such as Haworth and Manzi (1999) and Cowan and McDermont (2006). Each
of these have foregrounded the ‘social control’ ideology implicit within housing
management since its inception by pioneers such as Octavia Hill in the early 20 th
century and how ideology has informed practice. The social control elements of
housing management though couched in a more consensual contemporary language
are still evident in contemporary practice. The authors cite recent innovations such as
anti-social behaviour orders in the UK and speedier eviction policies as evidence of
this continuity in housing management. At the very core, social control discourses
incentive schemes) that have provided cash payments to tenants to relinquish their property or move if
under-occupying a large unit of accommodation.
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entail a bifurcation between ‘responsible’ and ‘irresponsible’ tenants. As we argue
later on in this paper, this bifurcation is used by the promoters of tenant incentive
schemes to justify its deployment.
While we have mentioned the importance of ‘social control’ as an ideological
discourse that has exerted influence on government, there are others that are also
significant. Specifically for housing management practice at least three other
ideological discourses can be identified. 4 These can be termed ‘social welfarism’,
‘consumerism’, and ‘managerialism’. ‘Social welfarism’, essentially advances the
view that expenditure on public services such as housing, education and health is an
effective means to tackle social inequality, while ‘consumerism’, promotes the idea
that the service providers should maximise choice in the delivery of provision.
However, ‘social control’ ideologies have resurfaced as a powerful influence
especially in relation to the problem of anti-social behaviour. ‘Managerialism’ can be
viewed as the valorisation of bureaucratic logic as a means to tackle the problems of
poverty. At its core, managerialism is premised on the assumption that many of the
problems faced by social housing tenants can be adequately addressed by more
efficient administration (Marston, 2004).
In stating the ways in which ideology informs practice, it is important to note that
none of these ideologies is likely to operate exclusively or in isolation from the
others. Individually, their influence can wax and wane depending on a range of other
factors. These may include, for example, the range and impact of issues currently
encountered by housing officers such as rent arrears, anti-social behaviour and a
shortfall in maintenance budgets. In addition, professional interest groups seek to
promote agendas that are consistent with their own values and interests (Jacobs,
Kemeny and Manzi, 2004). In the field of practice, housing officers and other frontline
staff have generally supported social welfare discourses while many senior staff
within larger government bureaucracies have embraced a managerial discourse as a
way of enhancing their own role within the organisational hierarchy (Marston, 2004).
Consumerism has also shaped the values of the housing profession hence the
4 In his paper on the governance of social housing in Scotland, Flint (2004) takes a similar approach but
identifies three ideological strands that inform government rationalities: active consumerism,
managerialism and communitarianism.
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demands of government for a more commercial ethos for service delivery and one
that places importance on accountability.
Establishing a link between the ideological discourses that inform social housing is
essential in understanding the reception TIS has received and the perspectives
advanced by our interviewees and focus group discussants. As discussed later on in
this paper it is important to recognise that the capacity of TIS to appeal
simultaneously to government and senior housing staff stems from the opportunity
they offer to be portrayed as vehicles for social welfarist, consumerist, managerial
and social-control discourses. In the case of TIS, it has been promoted as an
instrument of policy that can advance the claims of tenants for a more responsive
service, as a way of reducing costs for housing organisations, as a means to regulate
recalcitrant tenants’ behaviour and as a way of encouraging self-responsibility.
TIS and the politics of promotion
As stated at the start of the paper, the principal exponent of TIS has been the Irwell
Valley Housing Association (IVHA) based in Manchester. It manages 6000
properties and established the Gold Star Tenant Incentive Scheme in the late 1990s.
As many as 90 per cent of its tenants are members of the TIS and this enables them to
receive entitlements such as vouchers for shopping outlets, fast-track repair services
and rent discounts. The claims made on its behalf by IVHA are substantial. For
instance, it is purported that Gold Star has contributed to decreased rent arrears, to
more satisfied tenants (as indicated by surveys) and to the lowest rate of evictions per
capita of any UK Housing Association. Tom Manion, the chief executive of IVHA
has promoted Gold Star by addressing public forums and social housing conferences
for a number of years. Yet we want to suggest that the appeal of TIS cannot be
attributed just to his promotional skills (good as they are) but because the ethos of
TIS fits so neatly with the discursive rationalities that now shape contemporary
governance.
Most of the secondary data on TIS is uncritical and written as an endorsement of TIS.
Consider, for example, three UK government reports (RDHS, 2001; Housing
Corporation, 2003; ODPM, 2003), all of which sought to persuade a wider audience
of the benefits of TIS and its effectiveness as a management instrument. Interestingly,
the few critical accounts of TIS that have been published emanated from professional
5

practice, in particular those agencies that had sought to implement TIS. For example,
a report by Charter Housing Association in Wales (CHA, 2005: 3) provides an
assessment of TIS operation and sets out the reasons why CHA discontinued a pilot
TIS scheme. CHA noted that the pilot TIS ‘didn’t inspire or provoke the interest of
tenants to the degree that was originally hoped, coupled with the lack of any direct
and attributable benefits to the association from running the scheme’. In spite of
offering a plethora of incentives, only 13% of the tenants signed up and housing
officers reported that they had difficulty selling the scheme to tenants. For CHA, the
TIS did not achieve substantial savings ‘as very few tenants were persuaded to
address their arrears or tenancy issues in order to become members of the scheme,
despite the best efforts of staff’ (CHA, 2005: 4).
Empirical data
When we embarked on the empirical research in 2005 (Jacobs, Easthope, Slatter,
Seelig and Beer, 2006) we had two major aims. First, to gauge tenant, housing
manager and welfare agency perspectives on the utility of TIS and its efficacy as a
policy instrument. Our second aim was more theoretical, in that we were interested in
discussing with our interviewees the political and moral implications of TIS; for
instance, asking whether the establishment of a TIS might entrench the dichotomy
between good and bad tenants. It was very apparent that there was an absence of
critical analysis on TIS and no attempt to understand its deployment in the context of
other management activities. For this reason, we sought to engage critically with TIS
rather than adopt a line of enquiry that aimed to promote its deployment. In this
sense, our project was more ambitious in scope than other published research in the
area.
In Australia, large-scale tenant incentives schemes have not been championed by any
agency and no state housing authority has established a large-scale scheme
resembling Irwell Valley Housing Association’s Gold Star Service. This meant that
professional knowledge of incentives schemes was mainly limited to minor projects.
This said, in all states, with the exception of Victoria, housing authorities have
established small incentive schemes so the values underpinning TIS are generally
well understood. For example, in Western Australia tenants operate ‘a good tenant
policy’ with incentives for tenants to comply with their agreement. In Tasmania,
tenants who pay their rent via direct debits are eligible for prizes. In New South
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Wales, Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory the state housing
authorities operate a tidy garden competition. In South Australia, the state housing
authority (The Housing Trust) has established a ‘Customer Reward and Recognition’
scheme which conforms to a TIS by providing prizes and status to tenants who act as
good neighbours.
Our research focussed on the states of New South Wales (NSW), Tasmania, South
Australia and Queensland. Our data collection entailed: five focus group meetings
with a cross-section of tenants (one each in NSW, Tasmania and Queensland, two in
South Australia 5 ); 23 semi-structured interviews with senior housing management
staff (six each in NSW, Tasmania and South Australia; five in Queensland); 14
interviews with Community representatives and welfare body organisations (four
each in NSW, Tasmania and South Australia; two in Queensland). 6 The questions for
State Housing Authority interviewees were generally theoretical in that they focused
on the potential and possibilities of TIS for service delivery, tackling inequality
within pubic housing locations and housing organisational culture.
Our discussions enabled us to gauge housing manager, tenant and welfare agency
perspectives on the claims made in support of TIS and more importantly identify how
each of these groups views contractual arrangements in the context of welfare
provision. However, the questions we asked of housing practitioners and policy
officers generated responses that revealed some of the apprehensiveness that
surrounds contractual welfare models of service delivery.
The contestation surrounding TIS
The data collected has been categorised to make explicit the contestation that
surrounds TIS. It is apparent from the data we collected that there are a range of
views relating to issues such as the provision of rewards, service delivery and
organisational culture; all of which are informed by the wider ideological discourses
discussed earlier in the paper. Responses range from the positive in which TIS is
viewed as a valuable innovation to the more problematic in which respondents reveal
their anxieties about TIS and its implications.
5
The numbers of tenants who volunteered to participate in South Australia were greater than
anticipated so two focus group meetings were held.
6
One of the researchers in the team, Andrew Beer, while on a visit to the UK interviewed the Chief
Executive of Irwell Valley Housing Association, Tom Manion.
7

Providing rewards
Specifically, some of the housing officers and welfare agency representatives in all of
the four localities saw some merit (theoretically) in rewarding tenants who comply
with the conditions of their tenancy. As one South Australian welfare agency
representative argued
Bad tenants always get noticed and this means the rest get overlooked.
Tenants also voiced similar concerns as indicated in the comments provided by one
who attended a focus group meeting in NSW. He suggested that as things currently
stand,
people who look after their property don’t get any improvements on their
homes while the people down the road who trash it get it replaced.
This context is important in understanding the attractiveness of TIS, as it is portrayed
as a means of countering the charge that housing authorities concentrate their
resources on problem tenants at the expense of the majority. It is evident from these
comments that the attraction of TIS as a management model is its potential both to
encourage some tenants to act more ‘responsibly’ and to reward tenants who comply
with their tenancy regulations. The comments provided indicate the extent to which
disciplinary discourses have exerted considerable influence in framing the debates
surrounding Australian social housing policy, in particular the distinction that is often
made between deserving and undeserving tenants. Though as made explicit later on in
the paper, it is also apparent that there are countervailing views that challenge the
notion of a punitive approach within housing management practice.
Service delivery and organisational culture
What did our interviews report in terms of the claims that TIS can enhance service
delivery? It was felt by housing managers that TIS would be advantageous if it led to
staff workloads being reduced especially in processing rent arrears cases and repairs.
In Queensland, TIS were seen to by some to have potential for increasing the level of
interaction and providing a more positive dialogue between housing providers and
tenants. According to one officer in Queensland:
What little interaction there is between the tenant and the housing manager
centred on tenancy breaches.
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Interestingly, some of the staff saw TIS not in terms of disciplinary practices but
instead as a means to create more opportunities to be creative in a professional
setting. Consider for example, the comments in the excerpts below.
TIS could be a counterbalance to punitive measures which are usually the
major focus of housing staff. (Housing officer Tasmania)
Similar views were expressed in NSW, as illustrated in the comment provided by a
housing officer:
The client service officers say ‘no’ a lot in their jobs, so it would be positive
to have TIS and have good will in their job. Being able to make a good
decision would be helpful for staff.
While in South Australia, a housing officer suggested that
the Customer Recognition and Rewards Scheme encouraged staff to see the
‘human’ side of tenants. Not people who are in arrears or whingeing about
maintenance. It’s a different perspective and it reminds them really strongly
that not all tenants are bad.
The positive comments about the potential of TIS can be interpreted as an indication
of how ‘managerial’ ‘consumerist’ and ‘social control’ discourses have infused the
ways that housing managers consider their professional role and tenants perceive their
obligations. In particular, it is worth noting how the contractual paradigm implicit
within TIS is endorsed by some of the interviewees. Also, for some housing staff, the
rationale for TIS is viewed positively as a means to reduce administration and refocus
priorities to tenants who are deemed ‘problematic’. However, when we discussed TIS
with interviewees, some of their anxieties became apparent in relation to the
disciplinary logic implicit within TIS. The section below discusses the more
problematic areas that interviewees identified, their views make especially interesting
reading given the absence of critical studies on TIS.
Entrenching inequality
In all States, interviewees highlighted the potential for inequality should a tenant
incentive scheme be established. There was apprehension too that people might forgo
the benefits of TIS for a range of reasons beyond their control. This was a significant
concern because of the obligations on State housing authorities to allocate
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accommodation to tenants with a high level of need. The predicament of many
tenants therefore will not change after a tenant incentive scheme has been introduced
(e.g., those who experience longstanding conditions such as gambling or drug and
alcohol addictions). These individuals may become further marginalised in the
context of a scheme that rewards some tenants and not others. Consider the following
comments, the first from a South Australian welfare body representative and the
second from a welfare body representative in Tasmania:
If somebody’s deficient in living skills, are they going to be punished for
being incapable of doing better? The absence of support for some people
would get in the way.
Could TIS reinforce the divide between the haves and the have-nots and this
may lead some tenants to feel alienated and excluded.
It is clear from these two comments that TIS were seen to have the potential to
reinforce inequality, regardless of whether tenants have special needs. The comments
suggest that interviewees were aware of the divisive potential of TIS in practice and
how it might further entrench inequality. They also show the extent to which social
welfare discourses are prevalent within social housing professional networks. The
impact of neo-liberal reforms has made social inequality a significant concern.
Some rewards were seen to potentially create further inequities, for example
rewarding tenants by improved or accelerated maintenance services. They could
spark disputes with housing staff and disagreements between tenants. It was
suggested by a welfare agency representative in NSW that
disputes arise when people think they ought to have got something and don’t.
Some respondents felt that the introduction of TIS would formalise a ‘good tenant’/
‘bad tenant’ dichotomy. This dichotomy was seen as problematic for a number of
reasons. There was concern that it could increase inequality between tenants. There
was also some anxiety that the administration of TIS could introduce an element of
subjectivity, exacerbating inequality if housing staff favoured or excluded particular
tenants:
The risk of people who don’t play the game … being excluded and put to the
bottom of the pile. (NSW welfare body representative)
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The strongest criticism of TIS came from a housing officer in NSW. She expressed
concern that TIS was antithetical to the values of the department, because
we are a government service that provides services equally and without
prejudice.
Service delivery and staff issues
The managerial and social welfare discourses were clearly evident in responses from
some housing staff about workloads, the moral justification of any proposed TIS and
the possibility that TIS might actually exacerbate existing problems. In terms of staff
workloads, it was felt that a tenant incentive scheme could burden staff as indicated in
the comments below.
Staff may be resentful about having to implement it. (NSW housing officer)
Furthermore, if not enough time is allocated for staff to focus on the implementation
of a scheme, it could
come across as a half-hearted attempt [which is problematic because] there is
scepticism in the community about what the department can do. (NSW
housing officer)
In both Queensland and NSW comments were made about the moral rationale for
TIS, as one housing officer from Queensland said:
Why reward tenants for what they are required to do anyway? Tenants should
be expected to meet their responsibilities without the inducement of a reward
system.
Finally, it was recognised that, even with the best intentions, a scheme could actually
entrench division if it were not properly developed. As one welfare body
representative from NSW stated:
It’s not just a fluffy add-on … it has the power to be detrimental.
In South Australia, staff spoke of their experience in managing the ‘Customer
Recognition and Rewards Scheme’ that culminated in a rewards ceremony for
residents who acted as good neighbours. Some staff expressed concern about the
work involved of setting up the scheme. For example, a service manager working for
the Housing Trust spoke about the pressures in the following way:
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Time was the great issue; the scheme required lots of attention to detail and it
impacted on numerous staff who already had enough to do. It’s the assessment
and reviews that take the time. I’d say it was about one and half days per week
for a number of weeks. And you have to work out how to prioritise that
against the other calls on your time. Staff took work home, and they often do
that, but there’s a real cost in staff time to run this.
Interestingly, South Australian housing managers also spoke of the difficulty of
engagement with tenants resulting from the increasing residualisation of public
housing. One commented that the Recognition and Rewards Scheme
could go some way, become a bit of a focus and draw people in. However the
‘good’ tenants in a traditional sense are declining rapidly so we may need to
think again.
In Queensland, many of the tenants who attended the focus group found it difficult to
identify constituent parts for effective fair and beneficial TIS. When questioned about
the benefits of TIS one respondent asked:
Why reward tenants for what they are required to do anyway?
In Queensland, interviewees also spoke of the problems of trying to engage tenants in
a scheme that essentially created a division between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ tenants. For
example, one housing officer pointed out that
many public housing tenants already contribute to community well-being as a
matter of course but this is difficult to assess. A tenant incentive scheme
would run the risk of bureaucratising civic encounters and practices in an
undesirable way.
In this comment, TIS is seen as an administrative project that aims to formalise
interactions between tenants and those between housing officers and tenants. The
contract implicit in TIS is seen as an unwelcome intrusion into everyday encounters
within a public housing estate.
Conclusion
This paper has sought to understand TIS as symptomatic of the broader ideological
developments that inform the operation of government welfare services. It has drawn
from qualitative interviews and focus group discussions in four Australian States to
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make explicit the way in which TIS are perceived by practitioners, welfare
professionals and tenants. What conclusions can be drawn? In terms of practice, the
data we have collected reveals how practitioners, welfare professionals and tenants
interpret TIS and how the principles of welfare contractualism are viewed when
applied to a residualised housing management domain. Specifically, in Queensland,
there was very little enthusiasm for TIS and many of the interviewees had difficulty
identifying reasons to justify their adoption. In part, this can be explained by the
extent of organisational change already taking place within the housing department
which had placed demands on staff time. In NSW, there was some acknowledgement
that TIS might be beneficial, but with the caveat that it must be properly implemented
and resourced. In Tasmania, the potential benefits of TIS were acknowledged and
existing informal and locally based tenant ‘rewards’ or recognition schemes were
seen to provide some of these benefits already. In South Australia, the existence of a
formal ‘Customer Recognition and Reward Scheme’ meant that interviewees were
better able to discuss, first-hand, the experience and potential of a more elaborate
incentive scheme.
It is possible from a reading of the empirical data to note that housing managers,
tenants and welfare professionals have contradictory responses to the utility of TIS.
For instance, there is support for some aspects of TIS if it could help streamline
administrative structures and enable staff to have more autonomy. Some tenants also
view TIS as a way to access better services and refocus housing management away
from ‘problem’ tenants. On the other hand, some of the interviewees viewed TIS as a
policy instrument that however well-intentioned, could inadvertently entrench
division between tenants. Other interviewees held more ‘in principle’ objections to
the TIS rationale, linking it to other developments such as anti-social behaviour
policies. In particular, it is worth noting that many interviewees voiced concern that
TIS, if poorly thought through, had the potential to legitimise sanctions that could
accentuate tensions within neighbourhood communities and further alienate tenants
who were unable or unwilling to participate.
In terms of theory, it is of course not surprising that TIS elicits different ideological
responses. In many ways the diffuse range of perspectives provided by interviewees
are an indication of how consumerist, disciplinary, welfare and managerial ideologies
are framed within the practices of housing management. The ways in which these
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ideologies intertwine suggest that housing management practices combine a mix of
bureaucratic obligations alongside a set of prescriptive rationalities. TIS need to be
understood in the context of neo-liberal policy making if we are to understand their
wider political significance and their reception amongst welfare professionals and
tenants. TIS are one of the ways in which the relationship between tenants and social
landlords are being reconfigured by making what have been ‘social’ interactions
explicitly ‘economic’ (Lemke, 2003). In other words, areas of human interaction that
were seen as outside of the economic sphere are now being reconfigured in
contemporary areas of governance. The use of economic rewards and sanctions to
encourage behaviour modification amongst tenants is likely to increase as
organisations initiate strategies to address issues such as anti-social behaviour and
rent arrears.
The reconfiguring of policies from the social to the economic inadvertently shifts
understanding away from structural issues such as poverty and inequality to those
centred on individual agency. In this sense, TIS are similar to other innovations in
housing management such as policies aimed at tackling anti-social behaviour rather
than more resource based interventions that were used in earlier periods, such as
large-scale house-building programs and renewal schemes. It is important to note that
intervention focusing on tenant pathologies is not sufficient to address the wideranging
problems that coalesce around public housing. Rather than see TIS as a
panacea to overcome the challenges that confront housing officers (as claimed by its
most ardent supporters), they should be viewed as a manifestation of the same
disciplinary logic that now informs so much of the repertoire of housing management
practices. At best, they provide scope, in some circumstances, to enhance the capacity
of housing agencies to effect incremental change. At worst, they are likely to
intensify the dichotomy between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ tenants, entrench social tensions
within public housing communities and overstate the significance of managerial
interventions in addressing the problems of under-resourced public housing.
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Acknowledgements
This paper is based on empirical data derived from a research project funded by the
Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI). I would like to thank
AHURI for their support and acknowledge the contribution made by others in the
research team that co-authored the AHURI report on Tenant Incentive Schemes - Tim
Seelig, Andrew Beer, Hazel Easthope and Michele Slatter.
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