Welfare Reform on the Web (November 2000): Social Housing - Overseas

METAPHOR, MORALITY AND MYTH: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF PUBLIC HOUSING POLICY IN QUEENSLAND

G. Marston

Critical Social Policy, vol.20, 2000, p.349-373

Attempts to show how the 'customer' metaphor and the moral subject identity of 'bad tenants' both reflect and are used to legitimate a market-orientated policy change in public housing. In the same way that 'customer' was interpreted by some research participants as reducing the obligation of the state to provide long-term public housing, the moral category of 'bad' and 'irresponsible' tenants has been used to attribute the viability of the public housing system to the behaviour of individual tenants.