This growth in expectation, and the increasing desire for individual service that seems to come with it, appears to be with us for the long term. Services need to be as appropriate as possible to individuals and therefore we need a focus on who the individual or household is. A focus on gender, race, disability and income is, therefore, critical to get products and services right.
To tackle this phenomenon, we need a much greater understanding of the myriad niche markets we operate in and a recognition that we no longer provide a single product – we provide a series of products to meet each niche market demand.
The fundamental change is likely to be that we increasingly develop organisations with the cultures to work with the grain of customer aspirations and not to constrain and try to shape them to fit existing products and services. Approaches that focus on encouraging people to change their aspiration to suit what we currently do may have positive short-term results but they will not last. Furthermore, in the medium to long term there is a risk that affordable housing will become further residualised.
Clearly this is difficult in the context of housing shortage in many parts of the country. However, shortages can all too easily lead to reduced quality and paternalistic patterns of delivery. They can also cause loss of focus on the importance of infrastructure in making places work. Involvement in planning facilities and attention to transport and retail services are critical.
We live in a consumer society where many people define themselves by the brands they wear, the cars they drive and where they live
Paradoxically, in a desire to develop attractive products and services which have longevity and are of high quality, we may find in the short term that the quantity of what we produce reduces as we concentrate on improving our existing range of products and services. This flies in the face of the traditional needs-based, quantity-driven agenda which tends to focus on quantity rather than quality. But quality will be the long-term determining factor in organisational success. A focus on quality would seem to be a sensible part of any organisational strategy.
In addition, if we are seriously to position ourselves to respond to people's aspirations, moving into different housing products in a planned way will be essential. If people aspire to own their home or live for a short time in a high-quality market-rented flat in a city centre, then we should be attempting to meet that requirement. This is attractive, not only in terms of potential new customers but in terms of the loyalty of existing customers. Existing customers may well want to buy a property if they gain employment or need short-term market rented accommodation. Their lives might change in all sorts of ways and an organisation that is able to embrace their changed lifestyle and offer a range of solutions is likely to be attractive to the affordable housing renter. Organisations that see an improvement in their tenants' fortune as a reason to sever relations with them risk further residualisation.
This sort of proposition is usually seen as an either/or argument. Either we only deal with those who are economically active or we concentrate on those sectors of the population who are not. Those organisations that operate in several sectors of the housing market and see each part of the market as a niche requiring a different approach, and in some cases a different product, are the ones that will prosper in future.
Source
Housing Today
Postscript
David Cowans is group chief executive of the Places for People Group
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