ABSTRACT
Private developers are increasingly tasked with the construction of housing and community services and in certain cases, these same developers continue on as managers – directly or indirectly – exercising control over access. Normalised public–private relationships raise questions around the right to (affordable) housing and provider accountability. Keeping with these critiques, this qualitative research will focus on the experience of Build-to-Rent residents in Boundary Hill, a housing development in outer London. It will consider how residents have employed social media sites (WhatsApp and Facebook) and an online review service (Trustpilot) to overcome the limitations of existing developer-designed residential technologies and challenge bureaucratic or opaque management practices. Where there are inadequate formal avenues to challenge decision-making, virtual spaces present an alternative means for residents to create actually lived communities that empower them to contest unfair practices. In keeping with the Lefebvrian tradition, this chapter interrogates the disconnect between top-down management models and everyday practices of community-building. In doing so, it will demonstrate the capacity for online spaces to become both sites of resistance as well as key mechanisms to address power imbalances in the rental market.
