ABSTRACT
The moral agenda has been a frequently recurring organizing concept for regulating social housing. Nineteenth century social reformers and philanthropists were obsessed by the idea of the ‘moral evils’ arising from the slums and poor housing; early twentieth century housing managers became concerned, maybe obsessed, with the characteristics of their occupiers in the 1930s and they way they occupied their properties; and twenty-first century politicians frequently make statements that almost make anti-social behaviour synonymous with social housing. Social housing is governed through obscurity. There are a series of meaningless mantras which are now trotted out as its purpose – social housing is about meeting housing ‘need’, social housing is about providing ‘affordable’ housing, and social housing is about housing the social and controlling the anti-social. Obscurity enables power and resistance to feed from each other in a productive relationship, which can perhaps best be seen through responses to the obscure term ‘antisocial behaviour’.
