ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the public face of Housing Aid.1 My interest is in the way in which members of a local branch of a voluntary organization act as mediators between their clients and local authority housing departments.2 Housing Aid workers use an opposition between ‘Ordinary people’ and ‘bureaucrats’ in defining their role, and this opposition draws upon the value they place on informality. Members draw upon strategies of informality to dissolve the boundary between themselves and their clients and to distinguish themselves from members of state and local authority organizations. However, in order for Housing Aid members to be effective they need to communicate with, and rely upon, those agencies from which they explicitly distance themselves. This chapter will be concerned with the way in which their mediation entails a careful negotiation of identity; they identify and empathize with those who approach them for help and advice, and also develop and cultivate successful working relationships with those who hold the key to housing resources, despite (or hand-in-hand with) idioms of opposition.
