Social and economic objectives and safety work in Swedish municipal housing companies

• In this paper the Swedish municipal housing companies (MHCs) will be approached from a sociological perspective with a special focus on their activities to increase safety, in relation to their social obligations and market conditions. In recent decades, the traditional role of MHCs on the housing market has changed, partly due to the fact that they have been ascribed new functions, partly as a result of new financial market conditions. While financial sustainability or return has become increasingly important for these companies, their social responsibility has been abolished or re-interpreted. To work for increased safety in exposed residential areas is at the same time a recent re-formulation of the ‘social’ dimension and a new tool to increase the demand for dwellings in these blocks of flats. This paper will try to illuminate and analyze how social, economic and safety goals of the MHCs are interrelated and intertwined in the management of three residential areas in the city of Gothenburg. Data on safety strategies and discourses have been gathered within the framework of an interdisciplinary research project, “Public Housing and Local Safety”, through documents, observations and interviews with officials within MHCs, the city administration, and tenants. The analysis focuses on how the claimed reasons for safety work and its outcomes are related to social and economic goals of the MHCs. Discourse analytic as well as critical realistic thinking and economic sociology will be applied.

Keyword

Municipal housing companies

social and economic objectives

housing market.

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)