A paradigm shift in social housing

By Peter Graddon, director, Omfax Systems

Over the past decade there has been a major change in the structure and management of social housing. Housing Associations have led the way in the new approach and many local authorities have opted to migrate their homes to become associations or to create Arms Length Management Organisations (ALMOs) to allow them to change and improve the way they provide social housing.

When looking back at the changes that have taken place, it is evident exactly how far social housing has come. However, the most significant transformation taking place and one of the most challenging is the relationship between the resident and the social landlord. By the nature of its origins, social housing had been a somewhat paternalistic system and whether consciously or not, this had created a culture of dependency. To deliver on their fundamental objectives housing organisations need to overcome the legacy of the ‘passive resident’ and the view that some have that it is ‘their right’ to expect everything to be taken care of for them by their social landlord.

This means that a paradigm shift is required in the recognition of shared responsibility between resident and landlord. Both parties need to have pride in the homes that are provided and the immediate neighbourhood they live in. There also needs to be a realisation that the costs of maintaining homes and estates have a direct correlation to the rent that has to be charged.

The Responsible Resident
The responsible resident has pride in their home and community; they do not take it for granted. They accept that they too have a responsibility to maintain their home, get on with neighbours and so on, and where they can, take care of the things that are their responsibility. They recognise that prevention is better than cure and as such take steps to look after their home, report faults promptly to allow them to be fixed before they deteriorate into far more expensive repairs, and to notify the landlord of other problems in the immediate vicinity so they can be acted upon before they get out of hand.

The responsible resident does what they can to help their landlord and is conscious of not wasting money.

Developing more responsible residents is vital to getting the balance right between the duties of the social landlord and those of the residents. Responsible residents reduce the unnecessary burden on the landlord; this frees up the landlord to focus on more productive initiatives such as community projects, improvements in housing stock and controlling the cost of rents.

The Tenancy Agreement
The tenancy agreement goes some way to define the roles and responsibilities of both the landlord and the resident. It defines what services are provided by the landlord, what is expected from the resident, what repairs are carried out at the cost of the landlord and what charges will be passed on.
However, it is very common for the tenancy agreement to have little or no relevance once it has been signed. It is a legal document that is filed away and forgotten by the resident. Front-line staff are seldom aware of its detail let alone encouraged to refer to it when there is a need to remind residents of their contracted obligations.

This is probably because a contractual document is seen to be too harsh when trying to foster better relationships between landlord and resident. As such, housing organisations need to look at more productive ways to continually communicate this ethos and drive this paradigm shift in shared responsibility.

Change Starts With Communication
If we change nothing, we cannot be disappointed when nothing changes. If housing organisations want to create more responsible residents then they have to look at ways of communicating this to their residents and helping them to change.

One of the most effective ways of doing this is by providing residents with accessible and comprehensive information in the form of leaflets, handbooks, guides, DVDs and online material. If we take an example of a resident with a repair problem in their home, residents are unlikely to look at their tenancy agreement, but they are more likely to look at a Repair Reporting Guide or a Handy Hints booklet.

Most residents could fix certain faults themselves if they knew how to do it and this would avoid them having to wait in for an operative to visit their home. By providing residents with a Repair Reporting Guide you present them with an opportunity to identify the nature of their fault and highlight what they could and should fix for themselves.

For those faults that are the landlord’s responsibility, the guide helps to improve the repair reporting process. Residents and front-line staff are able to clearly define the nature of the required repair referring to a common set of diagrams and illustrations. The result being that the landlord is then able to send out the right operative with all of the information they need to complete the repair on the first visit.

In this one example it is clear that communication to residents can help to empower them and with such empowerment often brings change in attitude. If only half of the residents made use of a Repairs Reporting Guide to investigate and describe their repair faults the landlord would see a noticeable increase in the number of first time fixes and a fall off in the overall number of repair requests or at least the number of contacts that resulted in a repair order. Even if only a few residents were able to resolve faults without the need of an operative, the cost of providing such handbooks to residents would quickly be recouped and savings made.

The Repairs Reporting Guide is just one example. Equal benefits can be gained by providing useful information directly to residents such as tenancy handbooks, gadget guides and handy hints for householders. All of these help empower the resident to do things for themselves, improve the communication between resident and landlord and more importantly, become responsible and play a far more active role in the Resident/Landlord partnership.

For the housing organisation, communicating effectively in this way enables them to play their part in the partnership and take proactive steps to empower the resident. However, the paradigm shift does not stop at printed or online communications, it has to be maintained through all of the points of contact with the resident. In the article “Empowering The Front Line” we discuss how you also need to empower your customer service advisors in a similar manner to ensure the delivery of effective service.

If you are interested in finding out more about how communication through handbooks, guides and DVD’s can help empower your residents and forge closer resident/landlord partnerships, please feel free to contact us on 01869 242 967 or email me at peter@omfax.co.uk.