Housing Studies
Core Courses
Year 1
Housing and the Inclusive Society
This course aims to demonstrate the links between housing and the policy objective of social inclusion. It will provide an introduction to key concepts (primarily ‘social inclusion’ and ‘social exclusion’ but including ‘poverty’, ‘community cohesion’ and ‘social cohesion’, ‘social capital’, ‘mixed communities’ and ‘balanced communities’ and apply these to housing related disadvantage. It will also draw on historical perspectives in critically evaluating how social and economic forces contribute to social inclusion and social exclusion in a housing context including the changing popularity of the main tenures. In conclusion it will examine how housing policy and practice can contribute to social inclusion.
Since the decision to support the role of housing associations as the main providers of new social housing in the early 1980s there has been a significant shift in the characteristics of social housing providers in the UK . Services that were predominantly delivered by electorally accountable local authorities 20 years ago are now largely delivered by organizations run on a “business” model relying heavily on Boards of Management. This has led to considerable cultural change as well as exposure to “risk” in various forms. The course is concerned both with internal governance and the externally facing issues these new housing “businesses” need to address.
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.
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.
The course is designed to explore the aims of housing policy in the UK and the means chosen to achieve them. It also looks at how these have shifted over time, and it examines the factors which have driven this. In doing so, the idea is to give students a critical understanding of where current housing policy comes from, and why it is the way it is.
Economic Framework for Housing
This course examines the broader economic setting in which housing is located. Students will analyse market processes through standard comparative statics or equilibrium adjustment and apply concepts of market and state failure to the housing system. The course introduces the economic principles used in housing market analysis and local housing systems analysis along with the core arguments relating to the economics of subsidy and the pricing of social housing. All the above will consider issues relating to the three main tenures and will evaluate current proposals to reform policies that intervene to improve private housing conditions.
Year 2
Management Themes for Housing Organizations
The course is concerned primarily with some of the internal issues associated with management practices, roles and responsibilities. The Housing Business course took a largely external-facing perspective and identified many of the considerations that housing organisations need to be aware of strategically, so as to meet the needs of the many stakeholders they engage with in the course of delivering housing services. The Management Themes course in contrast, considers the role of management and managers within housing organisation including the role of leadership, and the dynamics of teams as key organisational mechanisms for coping with the complexity of organisational life.
Housing Management: Reflective Practice
Students undertaking the Housing Studies Programme usually have, as one of a varied set of objectives, the desire to improve their professional practice. One expectation of professionals is that they are largely autonomous in their operating and decision making. This expectation of professionalism also requires that individuals can reflect critically on aspects of their work in order to develop themselves as individual practitioners and also the policies of their organisations as professional bodies. This course aims to give students the chance to develop skills of reflective practice that they will be able to use throughout their working lives.