Tenants' complaints and the reform of housing management - Valerie Karn

This book studies the concepts of 'voice' and 'exit' as modes of complaining behaviour in the context of the use and occupation of property rented from social landlords. As few tenants have the option to indicate their dissatisfaction with their landlords by leaving their homes (?exit?), 'voice', ie complaining behaviour, becomes highly significant as a means of indicating to landlords whether and how tenants are dissatisfied. All this is placed in the wider context of the existing legal structures and administrative frameworks allowing tenants to articulate particular complaints and to vindicate particular rights. - - Empirical data were collected from a postal survey of almost 2000 tenants, in-depth interviews with a sample of these tenants and case studies of social landlords. The work also takes account of more recent requirements and developments in complaints handling by social landlords.