{"id":337,"date":"2020-06-15T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-15T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialhousingmatters.co.uk\/?p=337"},"modified":"2020-09-07T11:08:03","modified_gmt":"2020-09-07T10:08:03","slug":"soha-social-in-social-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socialhousingmatters.co.uk\/index.php\/2020\/06\/15\/soha-social-in-social-housing\/","title":{"rendered":"What does the \u2018social\u2019 in ‘social housing’ mean to Soha?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Co-written by staff and tenants of Soha<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Source: Marketingweek.net<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Soha, we\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve always involved residents at the highest level, including a tenant being elected as Chair of the Board in 2007. We became a mutual organisation \u2013 with shareholding membership open first to residents and now staff \u2013 in 2017.  For us, the \u2018social\u2019 in \u2018social housing\u2019 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building communities<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Doreen, a retired school matron, now lives on a small 1959 estate built by Soha\u2019s Council predecessor. Half of the homes remain social housing. She says: \u201cIt\u2019s 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 \u2013 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\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jackie Logan, Resident Engagement and Communities Manager at Soha who coordinated the COVID19 information gathering and dissemination adds: \u201cDoreen\u2019s experience shows that the crisis is tenure-blind. We found that organisations \u2013 not just existing partners of Soha \u2013 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building neighbourhoods<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s 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 \u201ctaking on responsibility for not only a home but also how we can make where we all live, interact and thrive.\u201d 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\u2019 minds on behalf of the wider community. \u201cWe have a shared motivation to make this work. We\u2019re a very collaborative lot, with our own Facebook Group, events which everyone contributes to, and thoughts of creating a Residents\u2019 Association which Soha will be able to support us with.\u201d Naomi thinks there are quite some misconceptions about what shared ownership means and so she successfully stood for election to Soha\u2019s Members\u2019 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building life chances<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Amy is a single mum who starred in the Soha\u2019s \u2018Real People, True Stories<\/em>\u2019series of short films in 2016 evidencing the impact of having a social home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can watch the film here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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