ABSTRACT
This chapter explores way in which governmental policies have sought to empower local people and place-based communities as a strategy to tackle the problem of welfare dependency during austere times. It outlines impact of the global credit crunch on housing policy and outcomes, before tracing the emergence of “the new localism” as a contemporary strategy of government designed to empower local people and communities in austere times. The chapter highlights how the skills, resources and energy of local people are regarded as assets to be “activated” in order to tackle societal problems at local scale, thus making people less reliant on state services. It illustrates how the ways in which social housing tenants navigate policy and political discourses of empowerment is highly variable, contingent and messy. Encouraging social housing tenants to become more empowered, self-reliant and actively involved in decisions affecting their housing has therefore emerged as a key governmental strategy targeted at those for whom the market has failed.
