Accounting & Finance Research Community Seminar – Dr Mercy Denedo and Dr Amanze Ejiogu

Title: “Poor Doors” – Accountability for the Economic Stigmatisation of Social Housing Tenants

Date: Rescheduled: Wednesday 17th May

Time: 14:00 – 15:00

Location: NUBS 3.15

Guest Speaker: Dr. Mercy Denedo works in the Accounting Department at Durham University Business School as an Assistant Professor. Her research interest focuses on interdisciplinary studies on accountability in relation to human rights, sustainability accounting, social housing, counter accounting, and sustainable development goals.

If you would like to attend please register using the following link: https://forms.office.com/r/8kwyUUe1tw

Abstract: The social housing sector in England accounts for 4.19 million homes representing 17.3% of the total housing stock in England but its significance was largely ignored until mid-2017. The Grenfell Tower fire of 14 June 2017 in which 72 people died changed this. The tragedy served to problematize issues relating to social housing by highlighting:

• the nature of the relationship between social housing landlords and tenants.

• the stigmatization of social housing tenants

Indeed, the dominant discourse in the media that surrounds public debates on social housing often portrays them as zones of urban disorder, criminality and menace and represents social housing tenants as benefit cheats and scroungers (Cole and Smith, 1996; Damer, 1992; Hastings, 2004; Slater, 2018).

One of the overt manifestations of stigma is the “Poor Doors” phenomenon in the London metropolis. Here, when blocks of flats are built with a social housing element in high-value areas, the social housing within the blocks is built to lower specifications and has segregated entrances and communal areas.

We investigate this phenomenon as part of a wider study into the construction of social housing stigma in England. We conducted 45 individual and 29 focus group interviews with housing associations – frontline officers, directors, and board members: Ministry of Housing officials, advocacy groups, industry associations, politicians, religious leaders, academics, journalists, and social housing tenants. In total, we spoke to over 200 participants.

We show how housing associations try to sidestep accountability for ‘poor doors’ by relying on accounting logic. We show how social housing tenants portray this phenomenon as the economic stigmatization of the poor. We also highlight the different means by which tenants try to hold housing associations to account for ‘poor doors’, including the use of counter-accounts in the media and popular art.