The Juridification of Unliveable Social Housing: Ownership, Citizenship, and Responsibility

Abstract With the increase of social housing deaths and crisis of housing conditions in Britain, it is imperative to understand the role of law and state-led forms of privatisation in making this situation possible. This article will focus on the historical and political context of the recent death of Awaab Ishak, who died in his socially-rented home due to mould overexposure. I argue that the law was not lacking here but will show how the juridification of housing governance through ownership mechanisms has been key in protecting the legitimacy of the state and capital accumulation more broadly in a British society ridden with economic crisis and social immiseration. To do this, I will theorise the development of a juridical framework that maintains the link between housing, the state, and capital by interpolating ownership and citizenship, in turn making social housing tenants responsible for unliveable social assets through the relocation of risk into their everyday lives. Going beyond critiques of housing privatisation and individualisation within contemporary accumulation strategies that depart from spatial forms of social organisation, I will argue that the link between law and capital needs to be understood temporally to account for the ongoing structural presence of non-accountability in the sector, that will not be simply remedied with incoming legislation. As such, renewed entwinements of property and racialisation that break with modern norms of individualistic ownership practices produce the conditions for the Ishak family’s experience of the sector and, ultimately and maddeningly, Awaab’s death.