Professor Steve Hilditch was appointed to Chair the steering group which will advise ministers on the remit, location and governance arrangements for the new National Tenant Voice.
The Government-funded organisation's aim will be to offer support to tenants and tenants' organisations and provide advocacy and research.
It is planned to have the organisation up and running by April next year. The steering group's members will include representatives from the Tenants' and Residents' Organisations of England, the National Federation of Tenant Management Organisations, the National Association of Housing Co-operatives, the Chartered Institute of Housing and the National Housing Federation.
In a report for the Policy Exchange think tank, former Welfare Reform Minister Frank Field argued that the heads of housing associations should be democratically elected by their tenants.
He also suggests that tenants should also be given the power to shake up the boards of housing associations when they fail to deal with complaints about neighbours' rowdy behaviour.
His article attacks some chief executives for turning housing associations into big businesses, by 'holding onto £36.4 billion of public assets and taking salaries in excess of £250,000'.
The MP for Birkenhead since 1979 further adds that the Government should give tenants greater control over their landlords in a new bill, aimed at reforming the governance of social landlords.
Former tenant advisor John McCormack published new research in which he claims the training provided to council tenants involved in stock transfers needed a 'major culture change'.
His research calls for 'the top-down, managerial agenda favoured by landlords' to be replaced by training based on issues which tenants consider important.
In a series of interviews with tenants involved in stock transfers, he found evidence of a broad mistrust of the information they receive from councils, housing associations, and tenant trainers. He concludes that this needds to be countered by trainers being able to talk frankly with tenants about their vested interests.
John McCormack applied Freire's philosophy of emancipatory education to analyse interviews with 'tenant activists' involved with stock transfers. Freire is known for his contribution to tackling illiteracy in Latin America, in which he argued that the ignorance and passivity of poor people was enforced by 'dominant elites' who controlled education systems.
John McCormack's paper concludes that independent tenant advisors 'need to demonstrate the characteristics of revolutionary leadership' that Freire identified. This implies 'an emotional dimension to their work with tenants - empathy, solidarity and commitment - as opposed to a clinical form of consultancy'.