ABSTRACT
The Housing Corporation, its founder, put the client under pressure to grant leases to new residents, presumably motivated by the view that leases are good and licences bad. The Housing Act 1996 Act went even further than this in order to protect the landlord’s interest. The legal status of the housing association tenant has varied with the prevailing political philosophy. The chapter considers some examples in which the lease/licence distinction is unhelpful despite lawyers’ attempts to bend the facts of the agreements into the prevailing lease/licence construct. It examines a new legal approach based on consumerist rather than property principles. The chapter suggests that the debate has been detrimental to the interests of tenants because the law has concentrated upon a specious recognition that tenants have property rights; thus, it has obscured the weakness of their real social and economic position.
