Housing Studies

Core Courses

Foundations of Housing Management

This course examines the activities that constitute housing management, and assesses the effectiveness of different approaches to housing management tasks in the light of legislation, good practice and research evidence. The course further explores the contribution of housing management to wider government aims including community cohesion, social inclusion and neighbourhood regeneration. The context of housing management and the changing roles of actors within it are identified and the future of housing management discussed.

Housing Contexts

This course describes and analyses the political, economic, and social development of UK housing systems and compares these (where appropriate) with other models of housing supply and management within broadly "welfare" state systems. There is then emphasis on the changes wrought by more recent market driven policies, the impacts and drivers of local level market change and how combinations of state policy and market drivers create and shape cities generally but housing supply and services specifically.

Understanding Housing Markets

Markets are fundamental to modern British society and to the housing system. In this course we set out to understand just what markets are, how they work, how they relate to the individual and to the State, and to appreciate alternate critical perspectives. This lens is then applied to the impact of markets on the housing sector – the mortgage, new build, owner-occupied and rental markets, the uses of market signals and competition in social housing and the state’s intervention in housing markets.

Law in Housing Organisations

Knowledge of housing law is vital to many aspects of housing practice. It is therefore a core module on the Housing Studies Programme and is taught by a leading practitioner. Specifically the law sets some minimum standards for housing conditions, it grants both rights and duties to landlords and tenants, it gives remedies for failure in those duties to both sides of the contract, and it sets the framework for access to social housing (most obviously through homelessness). This course will set out and explain this framework to students while directly relating it to common issues of housing management practice.

Professional Practice Ethics and Management

The course explores the responsibilities, behaviour and standards expected of those professionally qualified in real estate, planning and housing, and considers the applicability to professional activity of certain areas of management theory and knowledge.

Governance and Markets for Housing

Providers of social housing have traditionally been public sector organizations directed by government but over the past 2 decades there has been a shift to a more business oriented model with boards, clear management structures, and organizational strategies that can vary between agencies. This course develops understanding of this change and its implications for housing services, transparency and accountability.

Development Process

Actors within the development process should strive to deliver places where people want to live, work, relax and invest.  This course examines the nature of real estate development as a production process, the quality of the built environment and its relationship to broader social, economic and political forces.

Methods of Social Research (compulsory course for MSc students)

This course will provide students with the opportunity to acquire skills in research design, quantitative and qualitative data collection and data analysis. Further the course will enable students to think critically about the uses of sociological research and the social, political and institutional contexts within which it takes place.