Housing's Better Future: Reality, Image and Change
Introduction – The story so far

Housing's Better Future is the Federation's project to reposition housing provided by Federation members.

The Federation's representation and lobbying over the last few years has certainly had successes. Under the banner of housing's 'reinvention', we have helped secure positive change in the public policy climate.

At national, regional and local level, there is growing recognition of the importance of housing and the physical environment. This is not just housing for its own sake, but as being critical for delivery of better employment and economic development opportunities, improved educational attainment and better health outcomes, regeneration and renewal of neighbourhoods in urban and rural locations. Many of the government's policy initiatives recognise the connections between housing and wider issues of social justice. Housing is back up the agenda.

Members of the Federation are highly diverse, and have many achievements to their name. Their track record of delivery is second to none.

  There is a mass of evidence which shows that their work in urban and rural regeneration, support for vulnerable people, sustaining independent living for older people and, more recently, the transformation of council housing through its stock transfer are all very positive contributions.

Despite all this, negative images of 'social housing' providers, tenants and neighbourhoods persist, in all parts of England.

Why is this?

The challenges

The answer to that question goes well beyond housing.

The impact of demographic, economic and social change over the last generation has created a strong relationship between poverty, unemployment, social exclusion and the homes offered by councils and housing associations.

Some government policies have unwittingly reinforced exclusion. Changes over the same period in the structure and scope of what housing associations do have resulted in the disparate and inaccurate images that, fair or not, are generally perceived.

This applies to all social housing – whether we define that as the sector managed by Federation members, or as also including local authority housing.

There can be little doubt that the overall 'social housing' label is no longer a helpful one.

The challenge of this project is to revitalise the 'housing association brand', although not to the detriment of the 'council housing' brand.

This challenge is to all members, and to each individual member of the Federation.

This applies whatever the size of organisation or its location or generic activity.

It is not the Federation's image which is the issue. It is the image of social housing as a whole, and within that the influence of that image on housing associations, companies and trusts which are in the Federation's membership.

The Federation's work to date

The Federation has been working for some time to build up to this project.

We started by speaking of housing's reinvention, with the successes described above. We have now moved on to the more ambitious task of transformation.

Housing's Better Future is vital to transformation, as without assertive presentation, negative images are likely to persist long after real change has occurred.

The task will not be easy. Part of the difficulty we face is the legacy of inconsistency and change within public policy. We also have to accept that the sector as a whole has, until recently, paid scant regard to demographic, labour market and economic change and its impact on the work of housing associations.

'Location, location, location' is the mantra of estate agents. Public data bears out the fact that perceptions of area and neighbourhood are more prominent in influencing attitudes to housing than other factors.

Crime, vandalism and antisocial behaviour are regularly at the top of resident complaints.

The Survey of English Housing also shows that perceptions of neighbourhood are strongly influenced across all tenures.

In August 2001 the Federation commissioned MORI to do some work on perceptions of housing.

The omnibus MORI poll recognised that future generations will find it more difficult to gain access to housing ownership (73 per cent agreed) but 66 per cent felt that 'the only way you can get the housing you want is to be an owner occupier'.

The same MORI data shows that the perception of social housing is poor in that only 17 per cent of people polled would like to live in social housing if it were obtainable.

That figure did rise to 55 per cent, if better quality accommodation were available.

Getting a better understanding of people's approach to choice, whether they are existing tenants or prospectively future tenants, is a critical part of understanding better the market processes in which housing associations are increasingly involved.

What do we want to achieve

Our ambition is to complete the task of transforming housing, and present it effectively through the Housing's Better Future project.

Rebranding exercises are shallow and pointless, unless the product is as good as the intended image.

We need to create opportunities for housing association renting to be seen as a tenure of choice, with its 'brand' as a representation of achievements and values.

Tenant, residents and communities are important stakeholders in a genuine rebranding. The brand values will thus have to reflect current economic and consumer issues in housing, and not portray it as a welfare product.

That is the major policy challenge which the Housing's Better Future project aims to tackle.

How are we going to do this

The Federation has been working for some time now with Wally Olins, one of the world's leading experts on branding, now chairman of the Saffron Branding Consultancy.

We have commissioned Wally Olins and his team to work on this project with us.

We have a national sounding board of some 50 members representative of all parts of the sector and which has helped develop the brief for this project.

The sounding board will work with the Saffron Branding team, evaluating its research and the ideas flowing from the feedback from members.

During May and June we have a range of meetings planned:

  • our 10 regional executives will operate as focus groups with additional members attending,
  • there are meetings of 12 member network groups,
  • a series of housing association visits is planned, including discussion with board members, staff and tenants,
  • there will be direct discussions with some 50 stakeholders and others to take on board their views.
These initial meetings, together with the research programme, will focus on four key areas:
  • What are the key ideas behind our housing?
  • What are we like to deal with?
  • What can get in the way of Housing's Better Future?
  • A What do we need to do to build our brand in the market place?
This work will help us analyse our product, the environment in which we operate, the communication of our activities and service delivery and the behaviour of our member organisations – how effective are we in dealing with service delivery will be a critical question to tackle.

Developing this situation analysis will help us develop a new central idea to reposition the image of housing associations and support the objective of eliminating the poor perception of social housing.

The culminating stage of these activities will be at the Annual Conference in September.

Work will be needed beyond that stage for the rest of this year as we build up to an overall three-year programme to support key strategic change.

Key points

  • Social housing, whether provided by housing associations or local authorities, has a poor image and public perception.
  • This unfairly stigmatises tenants and communities, as well as causing business difficulties for the Federation’s membership.
  • Changing this perception is a top priority for our members – 81 per cent of chairs and chief executives responding to our 2001 member survey said more needed to be done.
  • Repositioning our sector’s housing is not ‘spin’: it requires substantive attention to a ‘brand’ for the values, achievements and the effectiveness and quality of service delivery.
  • How members can help

    Support across the whole of the Federation’s membership is vital to the success of this project. The Federation is leading this work but its beneficiaries will be the individual members – with increased profile, market share and, in the long term, greater stability and success. All are business benefits. First, we need your ideas. Second, we need your participation in debate and discussion. Third, we will need your support for carrying through the Housing’s Better Future project beyond the end of 2002, in order that we present a new reality of housing and other service provision by the Federation’s members. You can become involved in this by giving us your comments and ideas via our website: www.housing.org.uk/information/campaigns