Managing a Tenancy

307 Pages·2014·1.68 MB·English

Managing a Tenancy:
Young people’s pathways into and
sustaining independent tenancies from
homelessness

Alasdair B R Stewart

School of Applied Social Science
University of Stirling

2013
Declaration

I declare that none of the work contained within this thesis has been submitted for any other
degree at any other university. The contents found within this thesis have been composed by
the candidate Alasdair B R Stewart.
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Acknowledgements

Thank you to my supervisors, Prof. Isobel Anderson and Dr. Sharon Wright, for your advice and
support. Thank you as well to my family, academic colleagues, and the team at Homeless
Action Scotland. I hope in our meetings and conversations my gratitude for all you have done
has been clear; especially where your advice and support was of a level that I cannot return
the same in kind.
Thanks go also to all the people who were able to assist in the recruitment of participants
despite working in the tough climate where services are being cut and workloads increased.
A big thank you is due to those who can only be named through the pseudonyms given to
ensure their anonymity - the twenty-five young people who allowed me into their homes and
were willing to share their experiences with me. I hope that the treatment of their
experiences within this thesis remains one participants can see themselves within.

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Abstract

Due to their disproportionate risk of tenancy non-sustainment there have been concerns
raised for young people making a pathway out of homelessness into independent living.
Despite these concerns, there has been limited research looking at how young people
experience tenancy sustainment or where they move onto after terminating a tenancy. This
thesis, drawing on Bourdieu’s (1990a) theory of practice, presents a reconceptualisation of
tenancy sustainment as a practice of sustaining a tenancy. The theoretical-empirical analysis
is based on data collected through longitudinal research involving two waves of semi-
structured interviews with 25 young people, aged 16-25, who had recently made a pathway
out of homelessness into their own independent tenancies. The interdependency between a
tenant and their tenancy presented young people with pressures which they developed
techniques of independent living in response to in order to sustain their tenancy and make it a
home. Young people not only had a particular housing position of being a tenant, they held
family and education-employment positions which took part in the formation and shaping of
the pressures they experienced living independently. Tenancies were not seen as an end in
themselves by young people who desired, through the experience of sustaining a tenancy,
increasingly independent positions within their other social positions as well. An uneven
process of actually existing neoliberalism across policy areas through its influence on young
people’s constellation of interdependent relations also created a dissonance within the
positions held by young people fostering social suffering. Young people ending a tenancy
viewed this as a ‘step backwards’ when it meant decreasing independence such as a return to
supported accommodation; ambivalence where it arose from the end of a relationship; and as
a move forwards, or ‘getting on with life’, when making a youth transition and housing
pathway towards establishing their own family household.

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Table of Contents
Declaration ................................................................................................................................... i
Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................... ii
Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... iii
Chapter One: Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1
Research Questions ................................................................................................................. 5
Outline of Chapters ................................................................................................................. 5
Chapter Two: Young People and Independent Living ................................................................. 9
Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 9
Tenancy Sustainment ............................................................................................................ 10
Youth transitions ................................................................................................................... 19
Actually Existing Neoliberalism ......................................................................................... 22
Neoliberalism and the UK Policy Context .......................................................................... 26
Scotland’s Divergent Path ................................................................................................. 31
Social Suffering .................................................................................................................. 35
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 36
Chapter Three: Reconstructing Tenancy Sustainment .............................................................. 38
Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 38
Theory as Modus Operandi ................................................................................................... 38
The Logic of Practice ............................................................................................................. 44
Constellation of Interdependent Relations ....................................................................... 46
Embodied Sensitivity ......................................................................................................... 52
Techniques of Independent Living .................................................................................... 56
Rites of Institution ............................................................................................................. 59
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 62
Chapter Four: The Act of Research ........................................................................................... 65
Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 65
Theoretical-Empirical Research ............................................................................................. 66
Qualitative Longitudinal Design ............................................................................................ 67
Participants ....................................................................................................................... 69
Retention .......................................................................................................................... 72
Semi-structured interviews ............................................................................................... 73
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The Relative Objectivity of Perception .............................................................................. 77
“This is going to sound silly…”: Symbolic Violence in the Interview Setting ...................... 79
Analysis ................................................................................................................................. 83
Ethics ..................................................................................................................................... 86
Risks to the participants .................................................................................................... 87
Procedures for informed consent ..................................................................................... 88
Ensuring confidentiality and anonymity ............................................................................ 89
The Best Laid Schemes: Problems with Access and Research Achievements ........................ 89
Chapter Five: Pathways into Independent Tenancies ............................................................... 93
Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 93
‘Going down the homeless’ ................................................................................................... 94
‘Making myself homeless’: Homelessness Presentations and Local Authorities’ Duties ....... 98
The Wait for Housing .......................................................................................................... 104
Conditionalities of Housing Ready....................................................................................... 112
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 119
Chapter Six: Making a Home ................................................................................................... 122
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 122
Making a Home ................................................................................................................... 123
Entering a Tenancy .............................................................................................................. 126
Furnishing a Tenancy........................................................................................................... 129
Practical Mastery ................................................................................................................ 133
Gaining Independence and Control ................................................................................. 134
The Diversity of Techniques ............................................................................................ 138
Techniques with Others .................................................................................................. 140
Conditionalities of Housing Ready: Delaying the sense of home........................................ 142
Intensity of Support ........................................................................................................ 142
Shifting Power Balances .................................................................................................. 143
Probationary Tenancies ................................................................................................... 146
Housing Ready and Tenancy Sustainment....................................................................... 148
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 149
Chapter Seven: Budgeting an Income ..................................................................................... 151
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 151
Techniques of Securing and Maintaining an Income ........................................................... 152
Making a Benefits Claim .................................................................................................. 153
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Maintaining a Benefits Claim .......................................................................................... 155
Willing to Labour ............................................................................................................. 159
Precarious Employment .................................................................................................. 160
When Techniques Break Down ....................................................................................... 162
Techniques of Budgeting ..................................................................................................... 164
Changes to Embodied Sensitivity .................................................................................... 165
Temporality ..................................................................................................................... 170
The Economy of Needs Over Wants ................................................................................ 175
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 178
Chapter Eight: Realising Independence ................................................................................... 180
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 180
Discourses of Maturity ........................................................................................................ 181
Levels of Experience ........................................................................................................ 181
More Pressures, More Independence ............................................................................. 184
Maturity as an Extensive Sensitivity ................................................................................ 187
Social Suffering .................................................................................................................... 192
Education and Employment ............................................................................................ 193
Marginality Folded Within the Tenancy .......................................................................... 200
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 204
Chapter Nine: Pathways Between Independent Tenancies .................................................... 207
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 207
Patterns of Tenancies Ended ............................................................................................... 208
Relationships with Friends and Family ............................................................................ 209
Tenancy not Secure ......................................................................................................... 216
Inadequate Tenancies ..................................................................................................... 219
Eviction ............................................................................................................................ 223
When to End a Tenancy ...................................................................................................... 225
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 233
Chapter Ten: Conclusions ........................................................................................................ 235
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 235
Managing a Tenancy ........................................................................................................... 237
The Management of Tenancies ........................................................................................... 240
Just Managing ..................................................................................................................... 247
Ending a Tenancy ................................................................................................................ 251
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Implications from Research ................................................................................................. 252
Theoretical Ambition and Empirical Modesty ..................................................................... 255
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 260
Appendix 1: Consent form for participants ............................................................................. 284
Appendix 2: Contact Information Sheet .................................................................................. 286
Appendix 3: Interview Schedule for First Wave of Interviews ................................................. 287
Appendix 4: Interview Schedule for Second Wave of Interviews ............................................ 292
Appendix 5: Example of contact sheet .................................................................................... 295
Appendix 6: Letter to potential participants ........................................................................... 296
Appendex 7: Information sheet .............................................................................................. 298

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Chapter One: Introduction

“The fundamental scientific act is the construction of the object.” (Bourdieu et al.
1991: 248)

Within Scotland there have been significant developments relating to homelessness. Policy
and practice, as well as academic study have progressed in the understanding of the causes of
homelessness (Scottish Executive 2000; 2002a; Kennedy et al. 2001; Rosengard et al. 2000).
Through this combination of development in policy, practice, and research, attention has been
given to supporting those experiencing homelessness out of it and to findings ways to prevent
further periods of homelessness (Pawson et al. 2007; Scottish Executive 2004). These two
concerns meet in seeking to ensure the resettlement of people who have previously
experienced homelessness into independent tenancies and research on this has used the
notion of ‘tenancy sustainment’ for examining this (Third et al. 2001; Harding 2004; Pawson &
Munro 2007; Pawson et al. 2006). The literature about tenancy sustainment has shown that
young people (aged 16-25) are more likely to not sustain their tenancy compared to other age
groups (Harding 2004; Pawson et al. 2006).
However, this literature has been informed by an “abstracted empiricism and policy-
determined research” that has left it relatively “under-conceptualised” (Kemeny 1992: xvi).
This thesis, drawing on Bourdieu’s (1990a) theory of practice, presents a reconceptualisation
of tenancy sustainment as a practice of sustaining a tenancy. The theoretical-empirical
analysis is based on data collected through longitudinal research involving two waves of semi-
structured interviews with 25 young people, aged 16-25, who had recently made a pathway
out of homelessness into their own independent tenancies.
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Crucially, tenancy sustainment, in the way it has been operationalized, has been principally
concerned with whether a person has left their tenancy within 6 -18 months of entering it
(Third et al. 2001; Crane et al. 2011). Despite the literature on housing pathways (Clapham
2005; Anderson & Tulloch 2000; Mayock et al. 2008) exploring the diversity of pathways in,
through, and out of different housing positions this operationalization of tenancy sustainment
tends only to differentiate between sustained and non-sustained tenancies (Shelter 2009).
This imposes upon the conceptualisation what Elias (1978) calls process-reduction, whereby
instead of understanding tenancy sustainment as a process, it has been understood as either
of these two states. Where different reasons for leaving a tenancy have been examined in
depth it has tended to focus only on negative reasons (Pawson et al. 2006) with potential
positive reasons for leaving, such as to take up employment in another city, remaining
relatively unexplored (Pawson & Munro 2010). Therefore, despite much progress being made
in uncovering the various factors which are important for tenancy sustainment (Harding 2004;
Crane et al. 2001) and broadening beyond sustained and non-sustained tenancies into the
diversity of pathways for leaving independent tenancies (Pawson et al. 2006) a coherent
conceptualisation has been lacking.
Kemeny (1992), writing on the epistemological foundations of housing studies, suggests a lack
of a clear notion about what makes housing distinct from other disciplines and the influence of
funding sources has caused the questions and concepts used for research to be constructed by
policy concerns rather than being research-led. Therefore, there is a “strong tendency for
housing researchers to bury themselves in their own empirical and policy issues with almost
complete disinterest in such *supposedly+ ‘abstract’ questions” (Kemeny 1992: 12) of state
power and social change. In order to reconceptualise tenancy sustainment, this thesis follows
the modus operandi of Bourdieu that “*t+he fundamental scientific act is the construction of
the object” (Bourdieu et al. 1991: 248) for researching the practice of sustaining a tenancy by
young people who have previously experienced homelessness. Through this the thesis aims
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