Universal Claims: welfare housing reform in UK cities and the resilience of a right to housing

As part of a programme of austerity measures, the UK Coalition government has made access to social rented housing increasingly conditional and temporary. This conditionality has presented social housing as a right that must be earned through responsible behaviour, a discourse that suggests continuing public support for a right to housing, and, paradoxically reflects belief in housing as a universal welfare service. This contradictory discourse has been most visible in the granting of priority access to social housing tor members of the armed forces, a measure which recalls the slogan of ‘homes for heroes’ that accompanied the construction of the first general needs public housing after World War I. This paper seeks to explore the persistence of a popular discourse of universality around social or public housing. It locates its resilience in the ‘abeyance work’ of tenants’ movement organisations and campaign groups and demonstrates how these movements maintain collective beliefs in social rented housing as a universal right.