Why does this matter to social landlords? Because the people that they house are being left behind.
Figures show that only around half as many social housing tenants work from home as do owner occupiers, and social landlords may inadvertently be widening this digital divide.
A survey of 25 housing associations for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that most have tenancy agreements that discourage or even forbid 'running a business' from their properties.
None have allocations procedures which check the needs of tenants, or their children, to have an extra room for work or study. For the 1.44m families with children in social housing, the prospects are bleak.
Put crudely, homeowners can choose an extra room for work or study and can afford to be online. Tenants are often prevented from having an extra room, are told they should not work from home and often cannot afford to be online.
To deny one group of the population the chance to have a work room in their home is a form of active social exclusion.
Potentially, housing associations can do much more than just provide housing. For those in low-demand areas, where letting with spare rooms is not a problem, home working could be a useful selling point to attract tenants.
But there is little evidence that this has been attempted.
If social tenants are allowed to work from home, the cost of starting a business can be reduced enormously. They benefit, and their community benefits, from a greater mix and a spirit of enterprise.
Ironically, many associations are considering homeworking for their own employees, but have done little to apply the thinking behind these initiatives to their tenants.
Despite the barriers, one in 14 association tenants in work already work from home, and more could do so.
The alternative for many tenants is to stay on income support or to find work in the 'black economy'.
Landlords could do a lot to tackle this, by helping tenants feel that working from home need not be surreptitious. They could modernise their tenancy agreements and communicate their support for homework clearly to tenants.
Government must act too. Space standards need urgent review to ensure that the 'spare' room (it has a purpose now) is accepted as a modern home requirement.
Above all, it is time to recognise that depriving social housing tenants of the chance to work and study from home, as homeowners do, is leaving them disconnected from national advancement.
Social tenants are half as likely as owner occupiers to have home internet access. They are also much less likely to have a spare room. The risk is that this gulf is set to grow.
One of the reasons may be that homeworking and computer and web access have not generally been linked in programmes targeted at more deprived communities.
The Wired Up Communities programme, for example, has helped to provide neighbourhoods with web access through set-top boxes and computers.
But the aim has generally been to improve services. Little or nothing has been done to help tenants work from home or set up a business. In this sense, the initiatives could be said to be making communities 'wired for welfare'.
Social housing estates are just as likely to have cabled connections as are home owners' properties. Sky dishes really do abound on council estates, clearly demonstrating the swift impact of new technology on residents' lives.
It is not hard for landlords to negotiate with cable suppliers to include broadband access within their packages.
But social landlords have not yet responded to the new ways in which homes work. Generally, they have seen web access as a welfare service issue, and they have housing allocation policies that take little or no account of the applicants' interest in having a room for work.
Housing associations' growing interest in providing live/work schemes is targeted at non-traditional clients. The thinking behind these innovative housing and business hybrids is in stark contrast to the way the same organisations manage their general needs housing. Overall the, presumably unintended, message to the majority of tenants is: "if you want to do well, leave the sector".
There is a persistent faith in collective approaches to tenants' information technology and employment needs among social landlords and regeneration agencies.
None of the housing associations surveyed for the JRF's report had tested tenants' interest in working from home. But some had monitored their use of the internet, confirming its growing use.
This points to a significant, if slow, shift towards homes going online through tenants' own initiative.
It is important to compare collective support approaches with the situation of homeowners, who normally do whatever they want with their own equipment at a time of their own choosing. In essence, communal projects can subconsciously re-emphasise this difference.
Having gained skills through collective training schemes provided by their landlord, social tenants are not being helped if they are then discouraged or prevented from working or studying from home.
As one housing association director said: "You do sometimes wonder why we don't just give tenants computers and let them get on with it. In the bigger scheme of things, the cost would be minimal."
Recommendations for the government
- Give social housing tenants the same chance as owner occupiers to work and study at home
- Bring space standards up to date to incorporate the impact of new technology
- Consider a new legal right for tenants to use their home for work, subject to compliance with nuisance obligations
- Revise housing benefit rules to ensure they do not penalise those with a 'spare' room used for work or study
- Abolish the term 'underoccupy'
- Review the emphasis on higher-density new housing to ensure that the modern aspiration to have a work room is not damaged
Recommendations for registered social landlords
- Develop a policy on homeworking. Consider imaginative approaches to encouraging employment, enterprise and education based at home
- Review the basic assumption that homes are only for housing. Modern aspirations include an extra room. To deny this is a form of social exclusion
- Review allocations policies, ensuring that applicants can express a preference for a work room
- In areas of low demand, use homeworking as a positive selling point to potential tenants
- Accept that black economy home-based work exists and can be encouraged to become legitimate
- End the onus on tenants to seek permission to work from home where no nuisance occurs
- Use buying power to explore discounted computer and internet access and technical support packages
Recommendations for local government
- Apply the same steps outlined for social landlords to housing management
- Recognise that homes and estates will be more sustainable if tenants and their children can work or study from home. This is a social exclusion issue
- Opt for quality over quantity in new homes provision. Better to house slightly fewer people effectively than to house only according to short-term housing needs. A social tenancy may be for life not for Christmas!
- Review bids by associations for new build grant against their ability to provide homes with an extra room for work/study, where required
Recommendations for the Housing Corporation
- Consider the digital divide risks of regulated landlords continuing to hold back home-based employment and study
- Review national guidelines on development and housing management to ensure that the potential of tenants to work and learn from home is encouraged
Source
Housing Today
Postscript
Disconnected – social housing tenants and the home working revolution. Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Housing Corporation. £12.95. Tel 01904 431213. Tim Dwelly is a policy consultant, www.timdwelly.com
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