Welfare Reform on the Web (February 2009): Social housing - overseas

Mixed income housing policy and public housing residents' 'right to the city'

J. Duke

Critical Social Policy, vol. 29, 2009, p. 100-120

Poverty dispersal through mixed income housing developments has become a dominant theme of housing policy in many parts of the world. They have the potential to do more than just physically relocate public housing residents to affluent areas. They offer people the opportunity to live in a diverse community, to participate in the community and to appropriate the use value of the community. However, they often meet opposition from receiving communities which regard cultural homogeneity as positive and private property as sacred and think that neighbourhood enclaves can be self-governed by exclusive associations. Poverty dispersal programmes must be implemented in such as way as to reinforce the rights of public housing residents in the face of such opposition.