The Housing Crisis and the Redefining the Role of the Professional

This study examines the 21st Century Social Housing Professional in England in the context of the contemporary housing crisis. It seeks both to address a gap in the housing studies literature which has given relatively little attention to how leaders in social housing professional identities and orientations have been impacted by the housing crisis; and to highlight how enhancing the capacity of those working and delivering within the housing system is as essential as interventions to shape demand, supply, planning and financialization.

The key research questions are:
• What do housing professionals perceive to be the contextual changes and challenges that are shaping their roles?
• What new skills and aptitudes do the contemporary housing professional require to respond to these new challenges?
• How can appropriate training be delivered and the sector build appropriate routes of entry and pathways to career development to nurture and sustain a vibrant housing profession?
• What implications does this have for policy and practice at the national, regional and local levels?

This qualitative study included interviews with a total of 53 individuals and eight focus groups, including representatives of the key national agencies and detailed case studies of individual housing organisations in England, as well as documentary analysis.

The findings indicate that the rapidly changing context of the housing crisis, including complex models of financialization, new forms of poverty and vulnerability, environmental imperatives and evolving systems technologies are rendering some traditional skills obsolete while new forms of expertise and capability are not always being developed. The study also found that the perception of the sector, the self-identity of practitioners and competing definitions of professionalism were transforming routes into the sector and the career pathways of those in it. The findings reveal a range of new skills and expertise that should be enhanced in the sector, but a complicated and contested organisational and multi-tenure landscape makes the development of a coherent training and career pathway infrastructure at national and local levels complex. There is a specific need to enhance leadership in the social housing sector within a wider project of raising the status and expectations of the housing profession.