Home Truths (With A Small PS)

The party conference season saw the economic arguments in favour of building more homes gain significant traction, and Trafford - in common with most of the NW of England - is a part of the world where unemployment is still rising despite the national figures indicating an overall fall. So this economic argument is a powerful one. Building homes boosts jobs on site and through the supply chain and, keeping as it does most of the spend within the domestic economy, creates further jobs up and down the supply chain, profits for distribution and tax revenues for the Government. But housing is also about meeting the inexorably rising demand for homes in this country. It shouldn't need the NHFs annual "Home Truths" publication to remind us, and politicians, of this. 

So what do this year's figures tell us? Rates of new house building are way below the rates of new household formation. Put another way, overall, demand for housing is rising. This shows in increased waiting lists, more homelessness acceptances, lower mortgage take up and higher rent levels in the private rented sector which in turn lead to more working families being eligible for housing benefit. With rent taking a higher proportion of disposable income comes, for me, the most telling phrase in the NHFs report: "Aspiration is stopped in its tracks".

I've been cautiously welcoming of the recent approach from government - what's not to like about a further £300m mini-round of the Affordable Homes programme and the prospect of a £10bn loan guarantee fund? But Minister - there is more that can be done; and it doesn't need to cost the government anything, there are three steps the Government could take that would ease the housing situation without needing funds throwing at them.

Firstly, please start to get tough with other departments that won't release their unused public land to provide sites for the new homes we so desperately need. Secondly, please give us certainty about our income stream in the medium term - we are doing our budgets now for 2013/14 and the current rent formula runs out the following year in 2015. Either tell us what the new arrangements beyond that date will be, or, even better, give us the freedom to set (within some form of local cap) our own rents in the light of local markets. Thirdly, echoing Jake Berry's call in The Spectator can we have some kind of land tax that encourages reluctant developers with land to build it out rather than just to sit on it.

And my PS? To be covered another time - but is anyone else intrigued by what's going on in local government at the moment? Civic leaders have woken up to the fact that outsourcing services is not the answer, that big is not always beautiful. When the leader of Britain's second city comes out and says as much, others really should start to listen. Who knows where this will lead - could merger mania within our own sector be the next conventional wisdom to bite the dust? Cosmopolitan anyone?

Homes For Britain? Yes, Please.

I've recently left the board of the National Housing Federation after serving my six years there. I'll go into that in a bit more detail in a later post, but I think it's worth noting that the recent political activity of the Federation has been more vigorous and more successful than at any time since I've been on the board. The latest initiative is the Homes For Britain campaign which, well, why should I explain what it when there's a handy handsome video to do that for me:

The scale of the campaign is impressive with the Federation working in conjunction with the Chartered Institute of Housing, Crisis, The Home Builders Federation, the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Residential Landlords Association to lobby on the issue at this important political juncture as the various party conferences get under way.

You won't be surprised to know that I agree with the campaign's premise. Who wouldn't? There is a desperate need for new houses across the country (although as I pointed out in an earlier blog - equating need with demand is a schoolboy error). It's also become something of a mantra that building houses is almost a by-product of kick-starting the economy. If you haven't yet chanted "Building 100,000 new homes adds 1% to the GDP" yet today then I implore you to do so, it helps if you face Westminster I hear.   Interestingly, that’s just the number of new affordable homes Ed Balls has said a Labour government would build – all with the proceeds of the 4G sale.

It's important to see though that homes are not all we need to stimulate the economy – particularly not here in the North. Did anybody else notice the figures on the impact so far of the Regional Growth Fund? Projects approved at £200,000 per job created! Our new social enterprise – the furniture recycling project Rainbow – has created three jobs for a little over one quarter of that sum! This fund was supposed to be used to create (and protect) jobs, but it looks to me like it's being saved for a rainy day. When social enterprises and other not-for-profit sectors could be thriving on this fund you can’t help but weep when you read conclusions such as this from the Public Accounts committee.

So, before this post tailspins into negativity, a wholesale hurrah for Homes For Britain, I support it 100%, I follow the Twitter account (as should you, you can find it here @homesforbritain) and I do think it's an impressive campaign. I'll only add the caveat that it would be nice to think that other, equally vociferous campaigns, with a view to telling the story of the contribution of not-for-profits to local economies, will be hot on its heels.

What Do Housing Associations Actually Do? Here's 964339 Answers

You’d think that the clue to what Trafford Housing Trust actually does is in the name. You wouldn’t have to be a genius to see that we look after a lot of housing in Trafford. It’s funny then that I don’t really consider houses to be our primary function; really what we do is create communities.

Communities is something of a tired, and at times difficult word, especially when it emerges from the mouths of politicians. But consider what it means to you. Take a mental image of a community - it probably involves houses, but it’s also people. It’s the green and commercial spaces around the houses. It’s some form of friction between the people – social friction – both good and bad. It’s the services provided to the people who are in those houses. Your image possibly goes beyond just houses and encompasses other forms of accommodation – sheltered schemes, flats, people outside the houses looking in. All of these things go towards making up a community.

Why is this distinction between houses and communities important to me? Well, because I think it points towards a hugely misunderstood aspect of Housing Associations’ work. We’re moving into an era of housing where the simple provision of housing will be delivered by an array of sources. Any one can provide housing and the Government is committed to supporting those who do it at the lowest cost. If we don’t understand precisely what a Housing Association does then I think we run the risk of leaving a lot of the work of creating communities undone.

I mentioned as part of a recent post about the National Housing Federation "Neighbourhood Audit", that we are undertaking once more. The previous Neighbourhood Audit revealed that the work that Housing Associations undertake benefits one in every ten people in Britain, with over £430 million being invested into communities! This review was last undertaken in 2008 and so it will be interesting to see how this has changed since the last time.

We have recently completed our own audit and the figures make for shocking reading (shocking in a good way, I believe). Here are some of the headline figures:

• Total spend on Safety and Cohesion in our communities: £189,087
• Total spend on Education and Skills in our communities: £47,259
• Total spend on Employment and Enterprise in our communities: £294,149
• Total spend on Environment and Liveability in our communities: £287,495
• Total spend on Well Being in our communities: £58,377
• Total spend on poverty and inclusion in our communities: £37,857

The complete spend for a year’s worth of investment adds up to £964,339.59 per year. That’s an astronomical sum when you consider that it equates to nearly 3% of our annual revenue. I think it’s essential we blow our own trumpet particularly loudly on this point, because when you compare it to other companies’ spend on Corporate Social Responsibility and how loud they shout about their work in communities, what Housing Associations do is well out in front and yet you don't hear a peep about it. Perhaps unsurprisingly the documented CSR spend of other firms is hard to find, but one example for comparison would be Nike who allegedly spend $25 million on CSR and have revenue in the same year of $19 billion – equating to just 0.13% of revenue.

Housing Associations should emphasise just how much work they are doing with their communities because "its what we do". As an industry there’s absolutely no harm in explaining to people the full extent of the work that we do. Especially when you consider that several studies have shown how important social responsibility is to both employees and customers. For instance this American survey suggested that 34% of employees would take a pay cut to work with a socially-responsible firm. Not only that but 70% of consumers would pay a premium on products from a socially-responsible company.

Before anyone worries, we’re not going to be putting up rents or asking our staff to take a pay cut, because we invest heavily in our communities, but it’s strange to think that there is a whole side to the housing industry that doesn't get talked about enough. Hiding your light under a bushel is all very laudable but the housing sector has no such reason to adopt such modesty. When cuts assail us and competition is increasing it’s vital that all are aware of the full extent of our work, so that customers, employees, ministers and even ourselves can see that beyond the deceptive names, the housing sector is also about investing in communities.

I’d like to end the blog today with a challenge – how can we create an industry-by-industry index to show the total social value created (call it CSR if you like) and if we had one, is there another sector out there that would rank higher than Housing Associations?

Consulting With Customers

I’m confronted with a familiar blogging problem this week: do I risk censure from the comments and spend the next 600 words revelling in THT’s triple success, which comprised of the Health and Well Being Award, the Customer Service Excellence Award and the all-important Gold Award from the Investors in People? I’ll risk your wrath and hope you’ll allow me a paragraph of pride in my staff who have ensured that of the 24,163 organisations (give or take) we are noted as being in the top 1.38% (I can go to more decimal places if you wish). It’s a testament to the continued hard work of our staff and the managers who work to ensure that they are supported.

This week has been unusual as not only have I managed to get a year older, I’ve also been away at the National Housing Federation’s Annual Conference (have a look at the hashtag #nhfannual11 for all the Twitter gossip and reporting from the event). I’ll be rounding up my thoughts on the conference for the blog next week, but this week I wanted to report back on the Customer Day that went on at THT just before I left.

I feel events like our annual Customer Day are essential to establishing and building relationships with our tenants. We are a service provider and we need as much feedback – both positive and negative – as possible to ensure that our customers get the very best service that we can provide. The Customer Day is a chance for interested parties to come and review the annual report, ask questions and learn more about the work we do.

Although no Housing Association ever really struggles to get opinions from tenants, getting them to come and consult with us has proven to be more of a challenge. Last year we had over 100 tenants at the Customer Day but this year, somewhat disappointingly it was just over 80. When you consider that we invite every single THT tenant to the Customer Day, you could argue that it’s a small percentage. I think this puts the incentive back onto us to come up with increasingly interesting and innovative ways of eliciting feedback. A few options we’re already looking at for next year involve fun days, teaming up with other local Housing providers and the always-intriguing possibilities of social media. As ever if you have any thoughts about encouraging this vital participation then let me know.

One of the main jobs that the Customer Day attendees had to do this year was to review the Big Day In… long-list and decide on which projects will be undertaken on October 5th. The Big Day In… is an initiative where we’re attempting to put our commitment to our communities into action. We appealed for ideas everywhere from our Facebook page to speaking directly to tenants for nominations of what people would like to see THT staff doing. The ground rules were simply that any projects had to be achievable in a short space of time and benefit our communities. The response was amazing with over 70 ideas suggested and the breadth and ingenuity of some of them show that crowd-sourcing ideas can produce some great results.

The next step for these winning ideas (full list below) is that between the 10th September and 5th October the top 20 projects will be planned out and on the 5th October they will be carried out by THT staff and, yes, that does include me and the whole Senior Management Team. It was interesting to see that alongside the clear-up projects which identified known and new grotspots, there were also some really innovative projects such as establishing a farmer’s market in front of the new Lostock units to sell local produce to the community.

Another one that caught the eye was the I Love Stretford project which sought to show before and after photos of the area and promote civic pride. It would be terrific if we could capture some of the energy and vitality of the I Love Manchester campaign and help Stretford hold its head up high. Finally, the most voted-for idea was to teach basic DIY skills to local people; a classic example of the “give a man a fish” philosophy. The hope is that with an introduction to these skills, tenants might feel more comfortable undertaking basic DIY work (not that they can’t turn to us if they need help anyway) and who knows where exposure to a new skill might lead…

Top 20 Projects Voted For By Tenants

1. Learning Basic DIY
2. Skip day and Community Clean Up
3. Moorside Road fence painting
4. Farmers Market in Lostock
5. All our yesterdays history project
6. Story time children's centre
7. Shopping services for the elderly
8. Jet-washing grotspots in Old Trafford
9. Clear ginnels in Broadheath
10. I love Stretford
11. Building Bridges reading project
12. garden clearance Granary Way
13. Welcome to Stretford House floral display
14. Shrewsbury St Community centre
15. School Road/Lester St yard planters
16. Grass and hedge cutting knock on
17. Clear ginnels in Oldfield Brow
18. Garden clearing Manor Ave
19. Baguley Lane and Croft Road clean-up
20. 120 minute property makeover

National Housing Federation Update, Plus Job Offer!

Yesterday was spent mainly dealing with business on behalf of the National Housing Federation. There were a few elements to the day and with the Annual Conference starting in Birmingham next week, I thought it might be interesting to share some of the local and some national issues that the Fed is currently working on.

First, I should declare my prejudice: I’ve been closely involved with the Fed for over 30 years and it is one of my deep-seated beliefs that an organisation like the Fed needs to exist, and that Housing Associations, on whose behalf it speaks so eloquently and campaigns so effectively, should all be members. Now more than ever we need a strong trade body to make sure that neither active policy decisions, nor unintended consequences cause harm to our businesses and the communities that benefit from what we do. There's more information on how to join here.

My first Fed task was to review our contribution to the Neighbourhood Audit. This is the second such audit – a collection of national statistical evidence that shows just how much housing associations contribute to local places through vital community work. You can find the 2008 results here. That survey showed that Housing Associations annually invest at least £435 million in this work, made-up of £272 million of their own funds and an additional £163 million from other sources.

This work benefits around one in ten of the population. This is one of the great untold stories of Housing Associations and deserves equal focus in the minds of ministers, along with the current obsession on new supply. It will be interesting to see the extent to which the national picture has changed in this survey – will “austerity” have bitten into this vitally important work, at exactly the time when we need more of it, not less?

For THT, the picture regarding investment in communities has stayed the same, something that probably won’t surprise regular readers. Our commitment to social, economic and environmental regeneration remains as strong as ever, with yet again, well over £1m invested in these activities last year – much of it through budgets allocated by local people, not my staff.

I then spent most of the day at the NHF Regional Committee. These regional forums are the essence of what the Fed does really well, providing a focus for lobbying, policy development and good practice sharing at a regional level. Their work is increasingly important – as the national agenda turns ever more starkly to issues around the supply of new housing, there is a risk that the differing and more complex needs of those regions that are furthest away from those southern-centric discussions do not get heard in the London-dominated conversations that matter.

The most intriguing part of the day was hearing from the Chairs of all the Regional Interest Groups (there are about a dozen of them covering every topic you could imagine) about their work over the previous 12 months – and their hopes for the work of the Fed in the next year. These Regional Interest Groups exist to support members and with up to 30 Fed members involved in each one, that support goes pretty deep into the Housing Associations of the North West – so if you are reading this and you aren’t part of one, you should be!

Of course the NHF’s national lobbying is a vital part of what we do and as part of the Regional Committee we got a really comprehensive update on the progress of lobbying around the localism bill, the NHS changes, the welfare reform bill, and the other ancillary legislation now wending its way through the Parliamentary process. An area of intense lobbying has been around the Welfare Reform bill’s proposals to end the direct payment of housing benefit. This is something that few tenants and almost no landlords see the point of and was there the slightest indication yesterday that DWP may be subtly changing its stance?

We will have to wait and see, but lets hope so. Then the lobbying can move onto the other nonsense of benefit reductions for those “under-occupying” their home. This seems to be penalising disabled people who need an extra bedroom, separated parents who need space for their children to come and stay at weekends and holidays. Essentially, it flies in the face of wisdom gained from down the years about how to make sensible allocation decisions. Good luck on this one everyone!

There was more - we learned at the Regional Committee about the Fed's internal Strategic Review (Housing Association readers you will be getting your questionnaire on this shortly - please make sure you help by giving us your views), we discussed the way the Affordable Homes programme is playing out with colleagues from the HCA, and we planned some future events where NW members can get together.

And what is the job offer mentioned in the title of this blog post? Well, currently I’m lucky to be one of the members of the NHF’s Board – the national body that has ultimate responsibility for the work of the Fed. My term comes to an end next year and when I leave, there will be no members of that Board based any further North than Stoke. A recruitment process for my replacement will take place next year – probably around May time. So if, like me, you believe that there is a distinctly different agenda around the North, if you believe that a Southern-dominated board would find it harder to understand and represent that agenda, then dust off your CV and think about applying – you really could make a difference. If you want to know more about what would be involved, please get in touch.