The Power to Choose: Effective Choice and Housing Policy.

This paper considers the current importance of choice as a concept in English housing policy. A key aim in extending choice is to empower the users of public services. The paper concentrates on the policy of choice-based lettings. We show how this is linked both to a wider policy debate in England regarding choice and to initiatives in other European countries, in this case the Netherlands. We then discuss the policy of choice-based lettings as it has been and is being implemented in English social housing. The paper goes on to discuss choice as a concept, with particular relation to rational choice. The view we develop is that choice has to be related to the capability to act and this is done through the concept of effective choice, which connects choice with access to resources. The final part of the paper offers an evaluation of choice-based lettings and its purported ability to empower users of social housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]