Housing governance and racialisation: ‘inclusivity’ in housing access and experience

In March 2022, the UK government refined its approach to tackling systemic inequalities with a seemingly innocuous refrain: ‘inclusivity’. The instilling of shared values and economic development were discursively framed in central government rhetoric as the solutions to existing disparities and processes that were linked to places deemed as deprived. Drawing on data from forty-seven interviews with policy practitioners, anti-racist networks, and racially minoritised residents in two UK sites (Oldham and Glasgow), this article examines the persistent ways that racialised discourses, structures and ideologies shape housing access and experience. The insights generated from this article shed light on housing policy in three ways: firstly, by identifying the pervasiveness of racialisation and racism in social housing allocation systems; secondly, by evidencing the devaluing of anti-racist knowledge and the role of urban development initiatives in erasing anti-racist networks; and, thirdly, by exploring how local practitioners identify the problems of housing inclusivity as rooted in lack of residential mixing and inter-personal racism, rather than operating institutionally. The article concludes that adopting an approach that is attentive to institutional forms of whiteness and racialisation enhances understanding of the policy landscapes within which practitioners operate, and the existing racial injustices in housing experience that are reproduced.