Social Housing and Homelessness Policies : reconciling social justice and social mix?

Abstract

Whilst housing policies already had a distinctive Scottish flavour even before devolution, the creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 has allowed further policy-divergence (see for example, Maclennan and O’Sullivan 2008). As Kintrea (2006) highlights the first term of the Scottish Parliament resulted in a number of high-level policy goals centred on social justice, social cohesion, economic competitiveness and empowerment. Both the policy documents and memorandums in circulation at this time highlighted that housing reform was, “to contribute to policy objectives that are broader and more fundamental than new arrangements for the delivery of housing services” (Kintrea 2006: 190). This chapter will focus its attention on the first two of these articulated goals: social justice and social cohesion, and in doing so illuminate the progress and contradictions that have characterised social housing and homelessness reforms in a devolved Scotland. Whilst social justice is concerned with equal opportunities and rights of access to social rented housing, social cohesion relates to social mix and is intimately connected to wider public policy debates around social capital, social networks and the most appropriate solution to tackling concentrations of poverty.