IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/houspd/v35y2025i5p811-828.html

Distrust and Disrepair: How Homeowners’ Perceptions of Contractors Matter

Author

Listed:
  • Natalie Blaustone-Dye
  • Eileen Tomczuk
  • Robin Bartram

Abstract

Drawing on qualitative interviews with a racially diverse sample of 46 homeowners in New Orleans and Chicago, we reveal how homeowners’ distrust in contractors shapes the character of home repair experiences. We demonstrate that distrust shapes homeowners’ attitudes toward construction workers, affects how homeowners find contractors, and influences the working relationship between homeowners and contractors. Overall, we argue that homeowners use distrust as a tool to protect their homes—assets with high financial and emotional investment—and hold contractors accountable in an industry they view as poorly regulated or even outright predatory. We recommend financial and policy interventions to improve trust between contractors and homeowners, including home repair resources for homeowners and improved labor rights/regulations in the construction industry. Further research is needed to determine the multitude of ways that distrust impacts homeowners and contractors in the home repair and renovation industry, particularly those from marginalized groups.

Suggested Citation

  • Natalie Blaustone-Dye & Eileen Tomczuk & Robin Bartram, 2025. "Distrust and Disrepair: How Homeowners’ Perceptions of Contractors Matter," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(5), pages 811-828, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:houspd:v:35:y:2025:i:5:p:811-828
    DOI: 10.1080/10511482.2025.2486975
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10511482.2025.2486975
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10511482.2025.2486975?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:houspd:v:35:y:2025:i:5:p:811-828. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RHPD20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.