New flawed consumers? Problem figuration, responsibility and identities in the English building safety crisis

Abstract

Particular populations within the UK housing sector (most notably social housing tenants) have been conceptualised as ‘flawed’ consumers (Bauman, 1998) subject to stigmatisation in governmental and popular discourses for failing to enact the correct forms of consumption within the ‘grammars of conduct’ of the housing system. These valorise home ownership, prudent financial management and maintaining and enhancing properties. The post-Grenfell cladding scandal in England has resulted in an entirely new population–long leaseholders of properties with dangerous cladding–becoming constructed as flawed housing consumers, reconfiguring problematic behaviour and shifting where responsibilities for resolving the cladding crisis should be located. This paper explores the governmental narratives constructing leaseholders as flawed consumers, tracing the ways in which this operates not just via explicit statements, but also policy inaction, and the affective outcomes this generates. The paper explores how affected householders construct their identity, agency, responsibility and consumption practices and their reframed understandings of the housing system and government.