Meeting the Decent Homes Standard: London Housing Associations’ Asset Management Strategies

The English government’s 10-year flagship Decent Homes programme ended in 2010. The purpose of this article is to examine the asset management strategies that a sample of London housing associations took to meet the Decent Homes Standard. Drawing on the concept of institutional logics, the article outlines the social housing sector’s conflicting regulatory context, whereby organisations were statutorily obliged to improve housing standards, without being able to raise rents as a way to fund improvements. Depending on whether the housing association adopts a market-orientated or traditional, task-orientated approach to asset management, the associations sampled have either disposed of non-decent stock to generate cash flows or else retained the stock, undertaking minimal repairs to meet the government’s target deadline. The article concludes that not only has this national performance target triggered different organisational responses, it has also led to longer-term unintended consequences for existing and future tenants.