Spatiality and auto/biographical narratives of encounter in social housing

Abstract

This chapter explores auto/biographical narratives of encounter in social housing. In recent years, housing associations have been mobilised as key instruments for developing active citizenship and responsible community through their close connection to people and places they serve and through neighbourhood renewal and local service provision. With the increasing problematisation of those in social housing, this chapter focuses on the efforts made by HAs to enhance residents' abilities to manage their finances through a financial capability programme. We argue that auto/biographies are shaped by personal encounters and relationality yet framed by wider discourses of welfare-to-work and individual responsibilisation. An auto/biographical approach enables the complexities and intricacies of social housing residents' lives to emerge and highlights the spatial determinants and constraints of the everyday that exist for many.