Co-written by staff and tenants of Soha
Social housing is unique because it provides affordable secure homes for the huge number of people in our communities who would otherwise not have a home of their own.
At Soha, we’ve always recognised the importance of both affordability and security. In an expensive area of the country, we have always capped all our rents at Local Housing Allowance levels, and are actively looking for opportunities to develop at Social Rent levels. And we let our rental homes on permanent tenancies (not fixed term tenancies) and offer about 75 new homes a year for shared ownership so our residents have secure homes they can build their lives in.
We’ve always involved residents at the highest level, including a tenant being elected as Chair of the Board in 2007. We became a mutual organisation – with shareholding membership open first to residents and now staff – in 2017. For us, the ‘social’ in ‘social housing’ is wide-ranging: we aim to ensure that it denotes something concrete, something beyond a mere classification: we feel a duty to our residents to put real substance behind the word by building communities, building neighbourhoods, building life chances and building resident expertise.
Building communities
Doreen, a retired school matron, now lives on a small 1959 estate built by Soha’s Council predecessor. Half of the homes remain social housing. She says: “It’s amazing how a community can join arms to help each other when there is a crisis as big as the current one. Good neighbours have never mattered more than now – our whole road is involved in either a WhatsApp group, emailing or phoning around to offer assistance for pharmacy, grocery or shopping runs, or just a chat. Just a whisper that you are short of any small essential and, invariably, you will find it at your gate or your front door. There is a strength of unity and care for each other. We’ve mobilised ourselves, but fed back to Soha when we learnt about further volunteer support groups as they emerged. Soha has been making a cycle of calls to anyone feeling vulnerable (or just wanting a chat). Staff have been able to publicise an ever-growing list of local practical help available in those individual calls or on public Facebook pages. So the local information that we on our estate, by being community-minded, have helped Soha with has directly benefited a wider population.”
Jackie Logan, Resident Engagement and Communities Manager at Soha who coordinated the COVID19 information gathering and dissemination adds: “Doreen’s experience shows that the crisis is tenure-blind. We found that organisations – not just existing partners of Soha – got in touch with us straight away to tell us about their lockdown services. They knew that a medium-sized community-based housing association knows its patch and its residents well enough to be able to take that information and target it to those who most need it.”
Building neighbourhoods
It’s not a given that putting up homes (in the case of first-time owner, Naomi, on former farm estate) means building a neighbourhood. That sense of place comes, Naomi believes, from “taking on responsibility for not only a home but also how we can make where we all live, interact and thrive.” Moving in to a new build all at the same time, she feels that she and her neighbours have an opportunity to influence the neighbourhood and how it is regarded right from the start. The estate is due to host the village green and playground for the whole village and they want to be known for keeping that at the forefront of developers’ minds on behalf of the wider community. “We have a shared motivation to make this work. We’re a very collaborative lot, with our own Facebook Group, events which everyone contributes to, and thoughts of creating a Residents’ Association which Soha will be able to support us with.” Naomi thinks there are quite some misconceptions about what shared ownership means and so she successfully stood for election to Soha’s Members’ Forum. She wants to find out more about what makes a housing association tick so she can better represent shared ownership as a means of getting on the housing ladder to the outside world.
Building life chances
Amy is a single mum who starred in the Soha’s ‘Real People, True Stories’series of short films in 2016 evidencing the impact of having a social home.
You can watch the film here:
Asked what the ‘social’ in social housing means, Amy said: “It’s a word which covers all the extra support available from a housing association to those who can’t afford private renting due to low income or those who need the lifeline which comes from having a secure roof over your head. I managed to get a social housing property due to being a mum, on a low income and struggling with over-crowding at my parents’. Now I have a flat which is my daughter’s first home and pursued two different career paths which both need the peace and space to study for.”
Building resident expertise
Leaseholder Gerald spent his professional life designing as an architects’ practice manager. Now he is Portfolio Holder for Estates and Communities on Soha’s Members’ Forum and Chair of the Tenant Auditors. He sees his role as holding Soha to account in his area of expertise – questioning whether Soha is doing as it says it will, how it decides its priorities, how it measures the outcomes and promoting the improvement to estates and communities. From assessing (with staff) contractor tenders to making small Estates Improvements Grants on behalf of the Members’ Forum, to considering the environmental impact of development plans, Gerald knows that his and his resident colleagues’ recommendations are taken seriously. “What I do now is an extension of my business life, but if you’d told me then that, in retirement, I’d be presenting to hundreds of people at a TPas event, I’d have been amazed! Soha has not only given me the opportunity to contribute in a meaningful and practical way to the built environment of Soha’s stock, but also equipped me with the training to deliver what we’ve learnt to others.”
Jackie Logan facilitates the contributions of all the residents involved in co-regulation, such as Doreen, Naomi, Amy and Gerald above, including a 20 strong Members’ Forum representing (currently) over 700 Members. She said, “Soha becoming a mutual organisation really amplified the part residents can play – Members directly so because they have a vote which shapes our services, but even those who choose not to go for Membership still have powerful and trained advocates co-owning the association on their behalf.
“We have always lived by the ‘for residents and by residents’ ethos but mutualisation focused our commitment to working in communities, giving residents the resources to shape their lives and futures.
“In other words, putting the social into social housing.”
