A Time For New Relationships

In starting this blog I’m acutely aware I’m perilously close to committing the heinous sin of perpetrating a blogging cliché. We have reached March and the indications are that Spring is ready and waiting to emerge. I can readily imagine then that if I wrote about the process of rebirth in housing and possibly used a nice shot of some daffodils to illustrate the idea that you would, understandably, lose all faith in me. I’ll ask you to note then that the image of a lamb gambolling in the field is used ironically.

Spring: the season for cliches about renewal.

Today’s topic is the idea of renewal – that other great cliché of springtime blog posts. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the renewal needed for some of the key relationships that housing associations have with tenants, government and communities. I’ve been pondering this recently because I believe that the flux that many are experiencing in the sector can lead to one of two reactions. Either the stormy conditions force organisations to down sails and take shelter. The other solution is to see the great gusts of wind as an opportunity to cover fantastic distances in a short space of time.

However you see the situation - the onus is on us to create original solutions – to innovate in other words. I believe if we don’t make the choices about how our organisations address the key questions, then others will and that I believe is where the real danger lies. For me, the approach we should be looking at is to reinvent what housing associations are and how others see us. That process starts by changing the way we relate to three groups in particular: tenants, governments and communities.

The new relationship with our tenants should give us a far greater say over who moves into and out of our homes. Tenants should have far greater clarity about if and when they will ever receive a property and more choice surrounding the services they receive. Irwell Valley’s Gold Standard drew criticism, but I suspect that in years to come we will see it as a ground-breaking product. Is now the time when we should provide our tenants with more incentives to “do the right thing” while they’re living in our homes? Should our focus now be doing as much to encourage independence and personal responsibility, as to protect the vulnerable?

Think about it - why shouldn’t there be some kind of “entitlement” built up each year by tenants who stick to their tenancy agreement, perhaps to be released after five years as a deposit, or as a “discount” on the purchase of a new home? Or how about establishing a new kind of mutual funded by a credit union, where each customer buys a share that allows them to occupy a property owned by the mutual. The value of the company (and of each customer’s share) is directly related to the behaviours of the customers. When people moved, they would sell their share in the company for the then current value.

The new relationship with government has to start with a revitalised description and shared understanding of value. So much of the current system of grants awarded to build new homes does not take into account the long-term value that the Government get from housing associations. Long after the cement mixers have been silenced the housing associations are providing a return on the initial investment. The longer term benefits created by the neighbourhood work we do already are complex to measure and we urgently need commensurately sophisticated tools to do the job. But we can also offer to do more - for example, how different might the world look if that grant was dependent on the rate that a housing association managed to get people off benefits and into a job?

Finally – we need to renew the relationship we have with communities. Localism is an exciting prospect but it needs time to mature and deliver its benefits. The possibilities of this new relationship with communities include assets that are transferred from local authority to community control. It would also be supporting community initiatives from food-growing programmes like the “Incredible Edibles” brand; reshaping high streets and supporting the use of parks and leisure centres. It could even extend to new employer towns – could the New Bourneville be found on the maps sometime soon? But realising this requires a clear and transparent "Social Dividend" to be declared; something that quantifies the cash that will be used to fund these wider activities and shows clearly that they are not being pursued at the expense of being a good landlord.

Of course some housing associations will align themselves to a model that more closely resembles that of private homebuilders, rather than of community-based social enterprises. Good luck to them - let them pursue the private equity they will need and live with the need to show their new financiers a 15-20% return. For others, like THT, who have a balance sheet capacity, an appetite for this more competitive world and an interest in place-shaping, the freedoms from a centralised "one best way" approach from the Audit Commission means we can, and will, investigate how these new relationships can be brought about. I believe that following this path could reveal the greatest opportunity of all – a chance to combine the best of private, public and third sectors and create housing organisations that have social value at their core.