David Mullins

University of Birmingham · School of Social Policy

This report presents findings from Year One of the evaluation of Power to Change's 'Homes in Community Hands' programme, setting a baseline picture and sharing early lessons on the formation and activity of enabling hubs.

The paper aims to develop a better understanding of the evolution and structuration of contemporary civil society fields. It applies analytical elements from field theories and closely related network governance literature within a qualitative research design to explore collective action around community-led housing (CLH) in England, a label assign...

The paper aims to take forward recent research concerning the development of grassroots innovations and sustainability transitions in housing. We introduce and empirically assess a multi-level, process-oriented framework informed by strategic niche management (SNM) and social capital theory. Drawing on qualitative data, the empirical part explores...

After 40 years of relative decline, self-organised and civil society participation in housing has ostensibly been resurgent since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Drawing on evidence from ten countries this Special Issue explores the socio-economic and policy drivers of community land trusts, co-operatives, self-help housing and co-housing within...

This report evaluates the Urban Community Land Trust Project, based on five in-depth case studies and expert interviews.

There has been a resurgence of interest in ‘community-based’ and ‘collaborative housing’ in many countries in recent years as this special issue testifies. A key barrier faced by ‘self-help’ groups is often the absence of recognition within government housing policy and funding frameworks. Case studies of policies that have enabled successful engag...

This paper presents results from the first international comparative study of non-profit housing organizations in Australia, England and the Netherlands to engage with panels of organizational leaders. The study uses a ‘modified Delphi method’ with Likert-type scaled surveys, followed by in-depth interviews. The paper introduces the concept of hybr...

This edited collection explores areas such as social enterprise, capacity building, volunteering and social value, and charts the historical development of the state-third sector relationship, reviewing the major debates and controversies accompanying recent shifts in that relationship.

Introduction Housing is perhaps the ideal field in which to explore the argument that something has changed in public services involving the replacement of monolithic, hierarchical public sector organisations with a wider range of agencies funded and regulated by government. This chapter draws on a series of Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC) stud...

The conclusion draws together the themes and questions of the book, highlighting the enduring nature of the tensions implicit in the service delivery relationship. It provides a review of where the third sector currently sits in the contemporary landscape of public service delivery, focuses on the dilemmas and tensions that service delivery brings...

The introduction sets out the themes of the book, in particular the recent historical and policy context in the UK. It sets out the book’s overall aim of providing a concise and up-to-date overview of the third sector’s role in England’s public services. It provides a detailed definition of the third sector, introducing some of the main theories of...

Housing associations are key examples of hybrids that have grown and been re-constituted as ‘delivery agencies’ for publicly funded social and affordable housing over a 25-year period. This long-term process has involved considerable tensions which may be depicted as contests between the state, market and community poles of hybridity. The chapter b...

This edited collection explores areas such as social enterprise, capacity building, volunteering and social value, and charts the historical development of the state-third sector relationship, reviewing the major debates and controversies accompanying recent shifts in that relationship.

This edited collection provides a comprehensive overview of the third (or voluntary) sector role in the delivery of public services in the UK. It covers social enterprise, capacity building, volunteering and social value; as well as the sector’s role in specific fields including employment, health and social care, housing and criminal justice. It i...

This important book is the first edited collection to provide an up to date and comprehensive overview of the third sector’s role in public service delivery. Exploring areas such as social enterprise, capacity building, volunteering and social value, the authors provide a platform for academic and policy debates on the topic. Drawing on research ca...

The move of social housing provision away from government to non-profit organisations and towards the market has been accompanied by a discourse of independence from the state. This article questions the validity of this discourse, drawing on hybridisation theory and a Delphi panel study with decision makers in 31 housing associations (HAs) in Engl...

Bringing real localism into practice through co-operative housing governance: The role and prospects for community-led housing in England William Plowden Fellowship Report by Richard Lang and David Mullins The overall aim of this fellowship project was to explore the potential that co-operative housing governance offers for effective localism an...

Partnership working is nowadays a seemingly ubiquitous aspect of the management and delivery of public services, yet there remain major differences of opinion about how they best work for the different stakeholders they involve. The balances between mandate and trust, and between hard and soft power, are crucial to current debates about public serv...

This paper presents the results of an international collaborative study of non-profit housing involving researchers in four countries using a common methodology to a engage the leaders of non-profit organisations themselves in the research process. The paper draws on earlier work on the hybridisation of social housing provision (Mullins, Czischke a...

This paper explores the complex process of hybridisation of third-sector housing and support organisations (TSOs) in Northern Ireland. The focus of the study is the policy field of housing-related support services, known in the UK as ‘Supporting People’. This is a hybrid policy field involving several government departments, a number of market mech...

Community-led housing organisations innovate in the resolution of local housing issues by adopting a specialised local focus and emphasising community leadership and engagement. In order to meet their objectives they require access to finance, skills and legitimacy; resources that are often secured through frameworks of intermediary support and ext...

This paper explores co-operative forms of housing within their institutional context. It considers innovation in governance, relations between community-based housing initiatives and the engagement of local residents in England and Italy. It does not confine itself to legally incorporated “co-operatives” but instead focuses on broadly defined ‘self...

Purpose The aim of the paper is to examine the contribution made by housing‐related third sector organisations (TSOs) in assisting ex‐prisoners to find housing, and the barriers they face in doing so. Design/methodology/approach An offender survey was used to measure awareness of and engagement with TSOs in eight prisons, alongside qualitative int...

Recent changes in the provision, funding and management of social housing in Europe have led to the emergence of new types of providers. While some of them can be portrayed with traditional ‘state’, ‘market’ or ‘civil society’ labels, many correspond to hybrid organisational forms, encompassing characteristics of all three in varying combinations....

While social housing has long been delivered through mixed economy mechanisms, there has been little focus in housing studies on what this means for housing organisations. This paper reviews recent international work applying concepts of social enterprise and hybridity to illuminate organisational behaviour. It addresses critiques of the explanator...

Mergers among housing associations have become a frequent phenomenon in both the Netherlands and England. The general literature on mergers highlights the need for research to consider the wider political and business environment, managerial motives and strategic choices, to adopt a process perspective and to evaluate outcomes in relation to compet...

This article contributes to the development of ideas about place leadership by focusing on the role played by housing associations within ‘place-shaping networks’ in neighbourhoods that have faced a long history of regeneration interventions in two cities in the Netherlands and England. It maps key features of place leadership in comparison with th...

Few single policies have had a more profound impact on the modern British housing system than the wholesale transfer of public housing to 'new social landlords' -primarily Housing Associations. This important new text provides a comprehensive account of the causes, processes and consequences of stock transfer.

Effective neighbourhood working is a key requirement for housing associations in England and the Netherlands, yet this is often hampered by conflicting institutional logics of scale and localism. Housing associations are often considered to be ideally placed to facilitate such change and have a business interest in doing so, but to do so they need...

in the housing studies field and some examples thereof and set an agenda for future analysis of network governance in housing studies. These examples illustrated through case studies some of the distinctive contributions of the network approach. These included the importance of the changing actors and characteristics of organizations participating...

Studies of refugee integration in the UK have tended to focus either on integration as a concept or on the experiences of individuals or communities (cf. Ager and Strang, Indicators of integration: Final report, Home Office, London, 2004; Phillimore and Goodson in Urban Stud 43(10): 1715–1776, 2006). This article adopts a different, meso level of a...

Significant claims have been made about the benefits of network governance and management in securing community involvement and assisting social integration in complex urban regeneration programmes. The move from vertical to horizontal forms of coordination, and the assumption of a more equal power distribution between participants, have combined w...

Reforms to the funding of new social housing in England in 2004 enabled private sector firms to compete with existing non-profit providers for grant. These reforms are at an early stage, but already around 4 per cent of new social housing is being constructed through direct funding of private developers. Expectations of increased efficiency were pa...

This introduction to the special issue on 'market concepts, coordination mechanisms and new actors in social housing' makes the case for multi-disciplinary and multi-level studies of the impacts of market-oriented policies aimed at social housing. The authors suggest that privatisation, tenant purchase programmes, market oriented policy shifts, inc...

This chapter contains section titled:

Recent policy debates in England and the Netherlands stress the need for mixed and vibrant neighourhoods that can meet the needs of all residents including the aspirations of upwardly mobile residents. Housing associations are often considered to be ideally placed to facilitate such change and have a business interest in doing so. However, the posi...

Housing associations provide an example of the non-profit sector taking a major role in public service provision. This article tracks the implications for public accountability of their growth over the past 25 years to become the main providers of social housing. It uses the concept of institutional logics to highlight the conflicting accountabilit...

This paper uses the Delphi method as a way of studying organisational and sector change. It provides a brief introduction to Delphi, its application to public management and its relevance to research on the transformation of social housing. It then describes an application to research on the future shape and structure of the housing association sec...

English Despite a long period of public management reform in social housing, including shifts from state to non-profit providers and exit opportunities for tenants, access to new tenancies has until very recently continued to be mediated by bureaucratic rationing approaches. This article explores the reasons for the long dominance of rationing, and...

This paper evaluates, through a fourfold framework, the extent to which devolution in Great Britain has enhanced the organisational accountability of housing associations three years after the creation of the Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales. The evaluation framework examines the goals set for social housing organisations, the pr...

It is argued that past approaches to the research of housing policy and housing organizations are now inadequate and unable to provide a clear explanation of modernization and change. The modernization of social housing is associated with changing core organizational competencies and the movement towards a variety of partnership approaches. In resp...

Since 1988 stock transfer has been transformed from a local initiative into a central part of government policy for housing in the UK. It began as a largely rural and suburban phenomenon, generating substantial capital receipts, but has also become a vehicle for the regeneration of rundown urban estates. The trajectory of this process has continued...

This article draws on studies of 23 Best Value pilots in the housing sector to assess the ways in which competition has been incorporated into Best Value strategies. While out-sourcing appeared to comprise a very small element of pilot activities, closer examination identified a range of approaches taken by Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) to pro...

This article draws on studies of 23 Best Value pilots in the housing sector to assess the ways in which competition has been incorporated into Best Value strategies. While out-sourcing appeared to comprise a very small element of pilot activities, closer examination identified a range of approaches taken by Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) to pro...

This paper applies organizational field analysis to compare the structure of the third sector housing fields in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Following preliminary accounts of history, structure, funding, and regulation, four key dimensions of field structure are compared: interaction, subgroups, structural equivalence, and patterns...

Following the suggestion of Ragin (1998, Voluntas, 9(3), 261–270), this article uses social origins theory (Salamon and Anheier, 1998, Voluntas, 9(3), 213–248) as an heuristic device to explore change in a specific field of nonprofit activity; the English housing association sector. Conventional histories of the sector in the twentieth century sugg...

Merger behaviour in the nonprofit sector has been relatively neglected, yet has considerable marketing implications. This paper draws on a range of sources to explore the nature of merger activity in the nonprofit housing industry. It locates mergers within debates about inter-organisational strategies, and explores the context, extent, motivations...

The idea of 'social exclusion' has emerged over a relatively short space of time to take centre stage in political and popular debates about social disadvantage in many European states. In Britain it now dominates policy discourse on strategies to combat disadvantage.This paper explores the origins of the concept of social exclusion and the meaning...

This paper suggests a framework in which the key influences on the regulation of social housing providers can be understood. It draws on a wider literature to locate and describe the types of regulation found in the English social housing sector. It develops an approach based on interest group theories which see regulation as “an exercise among gro...

This report begins by describing changes in urban policy including the creation of a Single Regeneration Budget and indicates possible consequences for race equality. It continues with a review of recent reports on race equality in the housing association sector including the Commission for Racial Equality's Formal Investigation of housing associat...

This article reviews the implications of recent fundamental change in housing legislation and policy for race equality in housing. A restructuring of social housing provision; involving investment shifts from local authorities to housing associations, the attempt to introduce market mechanisms and the encouragement of tenants and housing providers...

After a brief outline of recent urban policy developments this report concentrates on housing. It examines the background to the recent announcement by the CRE of a major formal investigation into housing associations. It reviews some new research published on race and housing and comments on the recent successful enforcement in the High Court of a...

DearM. and WolchJ., Landscapes of Despair: From Deinstitutionalisation to Homelessness, Polity Press, Oxford, 1987. 306 pp. £22.50. - Volume 18 Issue 1 - David Mullins

Recent policy debates in England and the Netherlands stress the need for mixed and vibrant neighourhoods that can meet the needs of all residents including the aspirations of upwardly mobile residents. Housing associations are often considered to be ideally placed to facilitate such change and have a business interest in doing so. However, the posi...