Housing Associations - Models of Social Enterprise or Agents of the State?

As I came to review the final draft of this paper two events provided cause for further
reflection on the nature of what is being reviewed here. Firstly, the conclusion of the
transfer of the remaining 15,500 Liverpool City Council housing stock to a newly formed
housing association: Liverpool Mutual Homes. Then one of Eastenders’ lead characters
spoke with a real sense of familiarity, of the problems he might have with ‘the housing
association’ when she takes in a friends family as lodgers. Delete ‘housing association’
and insert ‘council’ to picture the same script from only 3-4 years ago. Not quite as
significant an event as that at Liverpool, but one that seems to capture some of the social
changes involved: popular culture has caught up with certain policy developments.