Glasgow Housing Research Articles

Peer Support Workers as Equal Team Members. A Case Study of Peer Support in Glasgow Housing First

Abstract The text investigates peer support in the Glasgow Housing First project. Housing First is considered a social innovation towards ending chronic homelessness. Peer support should be an integral part of this approach, but little is known about its role. The aim of this text is to analyse peer support in the project from the perspective of its team and service users. We carried out an instrumental case study. For data collection we used semi-structured and group interview, direct observation, and studied service users’ files. To analyse the data, we conducted thematic analysis. We found out that peer support workers are seen as equal team members. Peer support needs to be recognised in the organisation, job role defined, and an adequate salary secured. We also present challenges in the areas of personal boundaries, self-care, and fulfilment of formal job requirements, and therefore it is crucial to provide peer mentor’s position within the team. Peer support relates to the provision of healing relationship with hard engagers and service users’ led support. Together with using specific tools and community resources, peer support results in either graduation from Housing First, sustaining their tenancy as Housing First tenants, or less days in homelessness.

The effects of social housing regeneration schemes on employment: The case of the Glasgow Stock Transfer

Regeneration is an internationally popular policy for improving distressed neighbourhoods dominated by large social housing developments. Stimulating employment is often touted as a secondary benefit, but this claim has rarely been evaluated convincingly. In 2003, Glasgow City Council transferred ownership of its entire social housing stock to the Glasgow Housing Association and over £4 billion was invested in physical repairs, social services and other regeneration activities. Using a linked census database of individuals (Scottish Longitudinal Study), we evaluate the causal effect of the Stock Transfer on employment in Glasgow through a quasi-experimental design that exploits idiosyncrasies and changes in Glasgow’s administrative boundaries. We find that the Stock Transfer had a positive effect on employment for Glasgow residents who were not living in transferred social housing stock. We establish that this effect was mainly accomplished through the local employment multiplier effect of capital spending rather than through any other programmatic elements of the Stock Transfer. Exploratory analysis shows heterogeneous effects: individuals who were over 21, female, living with dependent children and with less education were less likely to benefit from the intervention. We did not find significant subgroup effects by neighbourhood deprivation.

Developing workreadiness; a Glasgow housing association sports-based intervention

ABSTRACTThe contribution of sport-based interventions to individual, societal and cultural development has been debated extensively since 2007. Community organisations increasingly employ these programmes to develop participant aspirations and employment choices. Housing Associations are one of the agencies to utilise this approach and there is a growing academic acknowledgement of the value of sport and physical activity to this work. This article examines a Glasgow Housing Association project using rugby to promote the personal development of unemployed individuals, combining employability and behaviour change approaches. Consisting of end of programme focus groups and interviews of four cohorts of the programme, the article investigates potential improvements in work readiness. The Housing Association plays a unique role in driving forward the intervention. Participants perceived an increased sense of belonging, autonomy, relatedness and competencies required for future employment. The programme provides a key step towards work readiness, benefitting individuals and the Housing Association community investment activities.

Isolated and dependent: women and children in high-rise social housing in post-war Glasgow

ABSTRACTIn 1971 Pearl Jephcott's Homes in High Flats, the culmination of her groundbreaking research into high rise living in Glasgow, revealed the problems faced by young mothers on the new high rise estates in the city. This article interrogates two connected factors, social isolation and economic dependence, which characterised the experience of many women who were rehoused to high flats in the postwar decades. Drawing on evidence collected by Jephcott's research in the form of qualitative questionnaires with high rise tenants as well as ethnographic observation and action research with residents, we argue that the experience of many women of managing everyday life in a high rise flat with young children was frustrating, often lonely and unsupported, at a time when the home was still conceptualised as central to women's lives. Jephcott asserted that high rise housing had socially negative consequences for women and children. We do not disagree but argue that in the particular context of the postwar settlement, women's financial and welfare dependence on top of their particular housing circumstances in high rise flats constrained their opportunities rather than producing contentment thereby demonstrating the value of revisiting social research data.

House, home and transforming energy in a cold climate

Warm homes are fundamental to a sense of personal security and citizenship, but many lowincome families and households struggle to pay their energy bills, and energy prices are caught up in the politics of welfare and climate change. Our research uses a sociological perspective to investigate the experiences of low-income households, on a Glasgow housing estate, living through a major renovation programme to insulate homes and install community heating. The Housing Association’s aim was to combine amelioration of fuel poverty with reduced greenhouse gas emissions. We examine the complex results from the renovation, which indicate that the UK economistic model of households as primarily consumers limited, rather than facilitated, the achievement of desired co-benefits for welfare and environment. We show the centrality of personal and domestic relationships to the future of affordable, secure and clean energy. We suggest that social scientists have an important contribution to public understanding of connections between families and relationships, localities and the politics of energy and environment.

Scenario Testing of the Energy and Environmental Performance of “The Glasgow House”

This paper describes the results from a 12-month study of two prototype low energy dwellings built for Glasgow Housing Association (GHA). The houses are intended for mainstream and social tenure within Glasgow and contain a range of energy reducing features including one house with a thermally heavy clay block wall and one house using a conventional timber frame and both houses have sunspaces, Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHR), solar thermal system and low energy lighting. The dwellings have been subject to an innovative monitoring strategy by MEARU, whereby test occupants (students recruited from the School of Architecture) have been asked to inhabit the buildings for six two-week periods using occupancy ‘scripts’ that determine their internal behaviour. The scenarios thus simulate varying patterns of occupancy in both houses simultaneously and the performance of the houses can then been compared. Indications are that although the clay block house had a poorer thermal performance, it did have other qualitative advantages, and consumption differences could be eliminated by exploiting the thermal mass. The performance of the active systems, including the MVHR system, was found to be problematic, and specific scenarios were undertaken to explore the implications of this.

Post-Accession Polish Migrants—Their Experiences of Living in ‘Low-Demand’ Social Housing Areas in Glasgow

Glasgow is a city well known for bringing together a ‘housing need’ with a ‘housing supply’. Post-accession Poles are the most recent population to fill the ‘void’ in Glasgow's ‘unpopular’ and therefore low-demand housing in areas of social deprivation. In this paper we will focus on the intersection of individual paths with institutional projects occurring at specific temporal and spatial locations: through examining the housing-seeking activities of migrants and the low-demand accommodation letting activities of, for example, the Glasgow Housing Association. In the paper we examine the meanings, processes, experiences, and perceived advantages (for migrant families and for housing associations) and also the disadvantages associated with post-accession Polish families taking up and being potentially ‘steered’ into tenancies in particular areas of Glasgow.

Preventing bath water scalds: a cost-effectiveness analysis of introducing bath thermostatic mixer valves in social housing

AimsTo assess the cost-effectiveness of installing thermostatic mixer valves (TMVs) in reducing risks of bath water scalds and estimate the costs of avoiding bath water scalds.MethodsThe evaluation was undertaken from...

Evaluating Secured by Design door and window installations: Effects on residential crime

This article reports on the quantitative findings that emerged from an evaluation of the impact of Secured by Design (SBD) door and window installations on crime figures within Glasgow Housing Association stock. The findings reveal a strong relationship between SBD installation on crime decreases when compared to the period before installation and to a similar area where no intervention took place. However, given the uneven spread of the impact, there are indications that this intervention may not work in isolation.

Randomised controlled trial of thermostatic mixer valves in reducing bath hot tap water temperature in families with young children in social housing

BackgroundHot bath water scalds are a serious problem in the UK, and thermal injuries disproportionately affect disadvantaged families. TMVs are designed to reduce bath tap water temperature and scald risk....

‘Community Empowerment’ in the Context of the Glasgow Housing Stock Transfer

A key objective of the Glasgow housing stock transfer in 2003 was promoting community empowerment, community control and community ownership. The first-stage transfer was from Glasgow City Council to Glasgow Housing Association and it was assumed by many that transfer to local housing organisations (LHOs)—thus promoting community ownership—would follow. This paper assesses the nature of community empowerment in LHO management committees and is part of a wider programme of research on governance, participation and empowerment. The study found that, despite its construction and aims, stock transfer policy is not able to deliver a uniform policy outcome in terms of community empowerment. No unitary relationship between community empowerment and community ownership was observed: it is suggested that the opportunity and capability to make choices about preferred management/ ownership arrangements is more empowering than ownership per se.

Empowering Glasgow's Tenants through Community Ownership?

Post 1997, stock transfer has been pivotal to the housing and regeneration agenda of the New Labour government, both at the UK and devolved level. Although a heavily researched policy area, stock transfer research has tended to focus quite narrowly on the perspectives of policymakers, practitioners or members of the transfer association's governing body. To address this research gap and focus more explicitly on the voices of local residents, this paper draws on the case study of the unique two-stage Glasgow housing stock transfer in order to explore ‘community ownership’ and ‘tenant empowerment’ from the perspective of ‘lay’ tenants. Political ambitions for direct democracy and communitarian endeavour have been central to stock transfer agendas in Scotland, where the policy has developed quite distinctly compared with the rest of the UK. Focus group research with tenants in Glasgow, however, highlights that empowerment was not an important priority for tenants at the point of transfer; that the transfer has delivered mixed outcomes in terms of local tenant control; and on the key issue of support for ‘full’ community ownership tenants were unconvinced, and expressed a need for more information.

Deprivation Probability Matrix: Assessing Socio-Economic and Health Deprivation in Glasgow

This study investigates prevalence of socio-economic and health deprivation and their relationship across 129 social housing letting sub areas and 11 Housing Market Areas (HMAs) within Glasgow managed by The Glasgow Housing Association Limited (GHA). Considering socio-economic and health deprivation as two separate entities, this study estimates two sets of deprivation scores (Socio-economic and Health deprivation) and interrelationship between them for the city of Glasgow. The study proposes a method for scaling deprivation by exploring the statistical characteristics (Probability distribution) of deprivation scores and estimate probabilities of occurrence of deprivation for each of the letting sub-areas. Furthermore, the study presents a model called Deprivation Probability Matrix (DPM) for assessing the simultaneous impact of socio-economic and health deprivation in letting sub-areas across the city of Glasgow. The DPM model sub divides the area of Glasgow in terms of probabilities of deprivation and identifies scattered distributions of such indicators as allocation sub areas, employment deprivation and comparative mortality factor (CMF) across the city. The exercise identifies the top 10 causes of death in Glasgow and compares socio-economic and health deprivation relative to the top three causes of death in Glasgow. The study concludes that economic poverty is the main contributory factor to deprivation in Glasgow arising from industrial decline during the last two decades or so and recommends a multiagency approach for tackling poverty and other related social and economic issues.

Transforming Scotland's Public-sector Housing through Community Ownership: The Reterritorialisation of Housing Governance?

In recent decades, UK public-sector housing has increasingly been problematised, with government solutions focusing on modernising the sector by transferring ownership of the housing from the public to the voluntary sector through stock transfer. This promises to transform the organisation of social housing by devolving control from local government to housing organisations located within, and governed by, the communities in which they are based. The Scottish Executive's national housing policy of community ownership is the epitome of this governmental rationale par excellence. Drawing upon empirical research on the 2003 Glasgow housing stock transfer, this paper argues that, whilst community ownership is underpinned by governmental rationales that seek to establish community as the new territory of social housing governance, the realisation of these political ambitions has been marred by emergent central–local conflict. Paradoxically, the fragmentation of social housing through the break-up of municipal provision, co-exists with continued political centralisation within the state apparatus.

Community Ownership of Social Housing in Glasgow: building more sustainable, cohesive communities?

Reconfiguring the United Kingdom’s ‘problematic’ council housing through transforming its management and ownership, has emerged as a significant aspect of the policy agenda to deliver more sustainable, cohesive communities (Perry and Blackaby 2007; McIntyre and McKee, in Press). Empowering residents to take decisions about priorities for their local area promises both to challenge paternalistic and monolithic management practices, as well as forge relations between different citizens in a community through their active involvement in local governance structures. Drawing on the case study of community ownership of social housing in Glasgow, this paper explores the challenges to delivering this agenda following the city’s 2003 housing stock transfer. In particular, the assumption that such a ‘community’ exists and wants to be involved is explored, as well as the inherent tensions within such a model of community governance. The paper concludes that the mobilisation of ‘community’ may exacerbate divisions within the tenant group as opposed to transcending them.

The Political Economy of Social Housing Reform—A Framework for Considering Decentralised Ownership, Management and Service Delivery in Australia

Several State Housing Authorities in Australia are currently examining models of devolved management and ownership of social housing stock and addressing reduced Commonwealth State Housing Agreement funding (or have already done so). These changes in the provision and mode of below-market accommodation are reflective of two broad trends: firstly, a greater reliance on market and not-for-profit provision of public services; and, secondly, a change in the role and mode of bureaucratic intervention at various levels of government. In this article we illustrate a framework for analysing these changes by focusing on the transfer of some 86 000 properties from the Glasgow City Council to the Glasgow Housing Association (GHA) in 2003 and also provide an interpretation of how the restructuring of social housing in the UK reflects the political economy of property rights, and the governance and incentive structure through which the restructuring of advanced economies is implemented. We conclude by briefly drawing implications from the British case for Australia. The analysis is conducted in a new institutional tradition that assesses property rights and the provision of social housing, and associated policy goals, under comparative institutional arrangements or governance structures. We argue that stock transfer in essence is a policy of delineating ownership of different attributes of the housing stock and that such a delineation is crucial to the functioning of the emerging governance structure and the ability of stakeholders to extract value from ownership. We draw on a series of interviews conducted by the authors as part of research into the 2003 GHA transfer. These interviews were conducted with policy makers and politicians (past and present), the regulator in Scotland, GHA staff and representatives of the community-based housing association sector in Glasgow.

Community Ownership in Glasgow: The Devolution of Ownership and Control, or a Centralizing Process?

Abstract The largest housing stock transfer in Europe, the 2003 Glasgow transfer, promises to ‘empower’ tenants by devolving ownership and control from the state to local communities. This is to be delivered through a devolved structure in which day to day housing management is delegated to a citywide network of 60 Local Housing Organizations, governed at the neighbourhood level by committees of local residents. The receiving landlord, the Glasgow Housing Association, has further made commitments to disaggregate the organization via Second Stage Transfer in order to facilitate local community ownership, as well as management of the housing stock. This paper argues that while the Glasgow transfer has enhanced local control in the decision-making process within the limits permitted by the transfer framework, it has nonetheless failed to deliver the levels of involvement aspired to by those actively engaged in the process. Displaying, at times, more of the semblance of a movement than an organization, the Gl...

Housing market processes, urban housing submarkets and planning policy

This paper seeks to develop an analytical framework that can be used to generate insights into the working of local land and property markets and provide the basis for planning policies. The framework is based on the notion that local housing market areas are composed of a system of spatially defined housing submarkets. It is applied to an empirical analysis of the Glasgow housing market. The primary focus of the research presented is on migration patterns between and within submarkets and the role of price structures in these processes. In the concluding section the utility of this research is assessed as a tool for guiding decisions taken in planning for local housing markets.

Marginalised Voices: Resisting the Privatisation of Council Housing in Glasgow

This paper explores the opposition to housing stock transfer in Glasgow in the early 1990s. Taking the position of anti-transfer campaigners, it argues that transfer can be interpreted as a form of ‘privatisation’ involving a profound restructuring in the role of the state in a key heartland area of welfare provision. Using interviews from housing campaigners in Glasgow, the paper argues that the much-heralded rhetoric about housing stock transfer as promoting tenant choice is highly contentious and misleading. The paper includes by highlighting that dispite the move to transfer in Glasgow, there remains a significant campaign against transfer in other parts of the UK.

Intra‐Urban migration and housing submarkets: theory and evidence

In the 1950s and 1960s a group of housing economists at Columbia University developed a framework for the analyses of urban housing markets which was based around the concept of housing submarkets and household migration. There is now widespread agreement amongst housing economists that submarkets should be adopted as a working hypothesis but the concept has been reformulated in terms of intra‐urban relative house price differentials. The accepted test for submarket existence uses a hedonic model of house prices which assumes market equilibrium. This paper returns to an analysis of submarkets which focuses on spatial migration patterns. By examining household intra‐urban mobility patterns in the Glasgow housing market it is possible to demonstrate that submarkets tend to be self‐contained. The analysis also suggests that the current standard statistical tests may be incomplete and in the case of Glasgow underestimate the number of submarkets.