Discipline and inclusively repress: the hybrid governance of Housing First tenants

Grainger, G. L. (2022) Discipline and inclusively repress: the hybrid governance of Housing First tenants. Housing, Theory and Society, 39(4), pp. 484-505. (doi: 10.1080/14036096.2021.2012251)

Abstract

Housing First is a popular model of homeless services that has transformed urban governance across the globe. Scholars have praised Housing First as voluntary care or criticized it as a disciplinary intervention. Both perspectives offer a partial account of Housing First case management. I extend those studies with interview-based research that conceptualizes U.S. Housing First as a hybrid form of homeless governance that exercises control through discipline and inclusive repression. Government authorities contract Housing First providers to reduce public expenditures by rehousing chronically homeless people. Case managers make disciplinary interventions until tenants are confronted with an eviction. At that point, service providers use inclusionary repression to sustain market exchanges by selectively disenfranchising tenants and rendering them pliable to disciplinary interventions in the future. This paper advances homeless scholarship by showing how, as a publicly subsidized property management service, U.S. Housing First buttresses urban housing markets through hybrid governance.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: This work was supported by the Institute for Research on Poverty.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Grainger, Dr Garrett
• Authors: Grainger, G. L.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Urban Studies
• Journal Name: Housing, Theory and Society
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 1403-6096
• ISSN (Online): 1651-2278
• Published Online: 20 December 2021
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2021 IBF, The Institute for Housing and Urban Research
• First Published: First published in Housing, Theory and Society 39(4):484-505
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher