The Singularity

You might not have heard of The Singularity - nor had I until I happened across a Radio 4 programme that explained all.  It’s got a cracking little website all of its own that you can find here: http://thesingularityprogramme.tumblr.com/  

The Singularity - when AI overtakes human intelligence

So why is The Singularity important for #ukhousing? Well, it marks the point in time when, according to experts, Artificial Intelligence will overtake human intelligence and when that happens, everything changes.  Far off?  Science fiction?  Maybe, but there are some very smart people at Google, IBM and elsewhere who are absolutely convinced that super-intelligence that exceeds that of the human is inevitable, because of the exponential rate of increase in computing power.  

BigData & FabLab

At a time when digital headlines in #ukhousing seem characterised only by negativity to tenant tablets and drones and when much of the other digital stuff, such as BigData and the growing FabLab movement is passing us by, it’s not a popular thing to say that digital transformation is a necessary part of any successful housing association business model.  But being unpopular doesn't mean it’s wrong!  And that's not incremental change, but massive, continuous transformational change.  How else are we going to keep pace with the expectations of an increasingly tech-savvy group of customers?  How else will we will be able to bring medical and social care advances to the old, sick and vulnerable who we house?  How else will we help equip tenants for a jobs market in which entry-level jobs have been fully automated?  

If you are more concerned with the present than the future; if regulatory pressure on value for money is the monkey you need to get off your back; if falling rent collection because of welfare reform is threatening your business model; and if the rising cost of bricks and the labour to turn them into buildings is curtailing your ability to develop new homes, the answer still lies in transformation.  In a different world, where no Government is coming over the hill to rescue associations; where tenants are simply going to get more demanding and discerning before they pay their rent; doing what we’ve always done isn’t going to cut it. 

Some of these thoughts and ideas will be topic of the session in London next month where HACT and the northern housing consortium are coming together to discuss “Next Generation Solutions”.  You can find the full programme at http://www.hact.org.uk/events/next-generation-solutions-housing-transformation-and-innovation and I hope to see you there.

Oh, and in case you wondered, Ray Kurzweil Director of Engineering at Google who is working on machine intelligence and the use of natural language to drive computers and the man credited with coining the concept of the Singularity, projects that it occurs sometime between 2029 and 2045.  Will you be ready?  Will your organisation be ready?

Three Reasons A Freemium Model Would Never Work In Housing

It’s been just over a fortnight now since I published a blog talking about the possibility of how a freemium model would work within the world of housing associations. Judging from the discussion it generated on my Twitter feed it would appear that the housing sector is perhaps not ready for an open and real discussion about how we might benefit from different business models. Sadly though, I think that unless the sector actively chooses this conversation then we will ultimately find ourselves losing control of the discussion and having innovation imposed upon us. An even scarier thought is that acquiescence might hasten the return of regulation, thus strangling our ability to innovate.

 

In short, the way I see a freemium model working is quite simple. Based on a similar principle to Dot Dot Dot’s approach we could use some of the homes that we currently have empty within our stock to provide a first step home for people who were unable to pay. These people might have been recently released from jail, they might be people with poor credit ratings, they might be homeless. They would be able to live in the property in return for their guardianship of it during maybe a six month initial period. Their occupation might even be tied to a level of community volunteering. However, they would live in the house rent free. After the initial period we could then look at them graduating to other homes within our stock, or onwards into the private market.

 

In discussions on this topic since I published the blog I’ve found three main objections to the freemium idea.

1) It would provoke community resistance

There’s no doubt that it’s a tough sell to the people who aren't getting free houses. How do you respond to people within the same community, aggrieved that someone in their midst is getting free rent? Is there perhaps a way to engineer an increase in supply of empty homes beyond a housing association's own void portfolio that could be used in this way so that they too could be offered the same deal? It would need to be in a property that had the basics but in November 2012, 710,000 empty homes were empty in England of which 259,000 were long-term empty (meaning they have been empty for more than six months).

 

2) People should be able to access more permanent housing solutions, not rely on temporary ones

Yes, they should, but they can't. And for the many currently excluded from permanent social or private rented housing this solution would be useful. These are the people who would struggle to either afford or arrange a conventional letting procedure. These are the people who are falling through the cracks currently – the idea of giving them a platform on which they could build, while developing a further stream of potential customers for us in the future has to be an attractive thought.

 

3) You can’t give houses away for free

There’s an argument that’s hard to disagree with - that organisations don’t generally do well by giving away their main product for free. That’s true and the freemium approach wouldn’t work for all the stock in a housing association’s portfolio. However, while we have a number of properties that remain empty, no matter what we do, they aren't generating an income. They can though be used in a way that reduces costs and which generates a non-financial return. Looked at in a social value way, the economics are not so mad.

 

Innovation around the use of empty homes has a long tradition within the sector - short-life housing was once officially recognised (and funded) through the Housing Corporation; but it's always been at the margin. Does the severity of the current housing shortage mean it now deserves its place within the mainstream?

This post was first published on Inside Housing

It's Cold, It's Christmas And It's Callous

Sometimes there are things you have to do that you know you are not going to enjoy. Like reading the latest DWP Impact Assessment for Universal Credit. I read it because I thought it might shed some light on the impact of Universal Credit - after all, the clue is in the title if you look closely enough. Now, with the wet towel unwrapped from around my head and the smelling salts fading into the atmosphere some light is dawning (literally as I write this).

The Assessment itself is a well crafted piece of work - in my quasi-civil service days at the start of my career I would have been proud to have written such a precise piece. Of course, it's not exactly flowing prose but the facts are set out clearly, as is the logic used to produce them. So far, so good. But, there are a number of "buts".

The biggest is that if the headline of more benefit take up, less fraud and more overall cost to the Treasury is true, how come it doesn't feel like that for many households? Some of the answer lies in how averages and totals mask some pretty dramatic cuts - within that headline of "good" news is buried the detail that 1.3 million households will see weekly income drop by more than £100. Some comes from the fact that only financial value is assessed with no attempt to "impact assess" in any social value sense.

Then there's the related fact that DWP appear to have written it from a "producer" perspective. What this policy means for the DWP and the Treasury can be discerned, but for individuals - no chance. It's a real shame that the scope of the Social Value Act doesn't impose a requirement that policy making - as well as contract making - should be subject to a wider test of social and not just economic measurement. How in 2012, with everything that has happened in recent years across the world, can we choose such a narrow definition of success or failure?

But for me the biggest failing of the Impact Assessment is its absence of humanity. As this policy plays out, we must ensure that the real impact is truthfully portrayed. Yes, there will be heartwarming cases where the benefit changes provide a motivation for self-improvement of the kind MPs expect to see. We should not be afraid to report those - they matter for the individuals and society as a whole. But we also need to report factually how for a family losing £300 from their weekly benefit their choices are now between food and heating, we need to show how respiratory illnesses have increased and how child nutrition has suffered.

These human stories will play out across the country in the years to come as the callousness of this policy - encouraging people into work that for many just doesn't exist - becomes apparent. Comms teams across #ukhousing have got a job to do next year.