Welcome to the 21st century

Housing associations are an innovative lot. We’re known for imaginative and exciting projects, from foyers to business centres.

Yet a lot of the rest of what we do is ritualistic, old-fashioned and plainly in need of modernising.

Take rents, for example. We still charge weekly rents, a throwback to the days when people were paid every Friday. Who’s paid weekly, these days? We should have long switched to monthly rents due on the first day of the month in advance.

This would make accounting so much easier and arrears control would be simpler: we would have a whole month to take steps to bring in that month’s rent.

We still allocate stringently according to family size, with little or no flexibility. I don’t see what would be wrong with allocating a young couple a two-bedroom dwelling so that we avoid having to move them when the family, inevitably, grows.

A family may require additional space if they have lots of furniture or they may require additional rooms for relatives or carers who need to live with them. We just need to be more flexible in letting property. A person or a family may be homeless or in severe need but we are unwilling to under-let if necessary.

Social housing, after all, is meant to help poor people in need. It should not be treated as a benefit to be doled out only to those we consider deserving, although that is not to say we should continue housing those who no longer are in need.

We never think of providing furniture or even some basic furniture. In the private rented sector, a washing machine is considered a necessity, not a luxury, but here in the social sector, we expect homeless families, single parents and the other poor people that we house to get into further debt by having to purchase carpets, cookers, fridges, curtains, beds and bedding, tables and chairs. We could easily provide some or all of these things and recover the cost through a higher rent.

Maintenance is another service that we get completely wrong. We chase useless performance targets when we should have mutually convenient arrangements.

One association I know of allows its tenants to contact approved maintenance contractors directly; they provide repairs according to a schedule of rates. This landlord should be praised.

We should be providing tenants themselves with the means to arrange their own repairs and recover the cost from the association; instead, we insist on sending expensive contractors from our call centres even for very minor repairs which tenants should easily handle themselves.

Talking of call centres, we could use them for arrears control – after all, it is essentially a form of credit control.

We still send arrears letters one, two, and three, when we could simply have someone ring tenants on their mobile phones (all tenants have mobiles these days) or even text them with a gentle reminder. It might work wonders and it’s cheaper than sending letters.

There are many other areas on which we could simply try and modernise the provision of housing services.

We can try to reduce crime, vandalism, graffiti and maintenance through better design. We can similarly improve allocations, maintenance, arrears control and void levels by applying current good practice from the private sector to housing management.

As I said, housing associations are often a source of good ideas; this is a time for even greater innovation in the way we develop and manage housing.