Creative Approaches for Housing Choice - Working with Southern Housing in Tower Hamlets

Housing Choice Process
Tower Hamlets has developed the Housing Choice Process in order to allow their residents to choose between remaining with the Council or transferring to a Registered Social Landlord. As part of this process RSL’s are invited to bid to take over the individual estate – or group of estates.

The process consists of an initial round where several RSL’s develop action plans for investing in the housing stock and community development. These plans are developed working with a steering group of concerned residents. The RSL’s then present their ideas to the residents as whole during a series of open days. Finally the residents vote on which of these RSL’s they would like to work with in the future.

The winning RSL then becomes the ‘preferred partner’ and develops a masterplan and series of proposals around what additionality they will bring to the estate. Those plans are then presented at a series of open days, and also in consultation with the Steering Group. Resident (and Lease-holder) comments are fed into the plans. Finally the residents vote as to whether they wish to remain with the council, or to transfer ownership to the RSL. If the RSL is successful, then they set about implementing their masterplans.

Southern Housing Group, having worked previously with the Safer Spaces team on other projects, decided to involve us two of their Housing Choice estates, Globe Town and Boundary Estate.

Globe Town:
Southern Housing contacted Safer Spaces with an idea to create a colourful leaflet that was personalised for those estates. This was used at the first open day to set Southern apart from other RSL's, and also to give an idea of what could be achieved should residents choose to work with Southern.

Also, this leaflet raised the quality of communication with the tenants. Recognising that many of the tenants had limited English skills, the leaflet was mainly image based, not relying on words to convey our message. The leaflet was also translated into Silleti, the predominant community language. This emphasised Southern’s commitment to social inclusion.

Safer Spaces was commissioned to develop, design and deliver the leaflet. In order to do this the Safer Spaces team undertook a site visit to all the estates, accompanied by the Southern team. Then Safer Spaces facilitated a brainstorming session with Southern to identify key priorities for each estate, and also how those could then be translated into physical improvements. Many of these concerns and related improvements were to do with community safety overall, for example, site lines, lighting, signage, and other issues. These were then distilled into leaflet form, with images of each estate, and examples of what improvements could look like.

This leaflet was highly successful on the day; residents were impressed that Southern had taken such a detailed and personalised approach to analysing the estates.

Boundary Estate:
Southern Housing has been selected by the residents to be the preferred partner in housing choice. One of the key resident concerns is public safety in the many courtyards on the estate, as well as centrepiece Arnold Circus Bandstand.

Southern approached the Safer Spaces team to develop an interactive activity which could provide a focus for their initial open day with the residents. Their interest in this approach was based on the lead officer’s former work with Free Form at another RSL, on a tenant participation day. Southern felt that it was key to have something that people could do at the open day, and have a focus for talking about their estate. Safer Spaces devised a mapping exercise which focused on the open areas of the estate. The map also provided an excellent talking point to develop conversations about peoples’ aspirations for Boundary Estate.

Back to Safer Spaces
Please Click here for a pdf of the report

Applicable Lessons:

• It is never too early to begin taking a creative approach with residents, it personalises the Housing Choice experience, and set your RSL apart from the rest

• Having an activity as the focus of tenant open days provides people with a more casual and inclusive method of talking to RSL staff. Rather than being lectured to about new developments, tenants are physically involved in the decision making process.

• Having a focused activity made it easier and more comfortable for RSL staff to approach tenants. The activity provided a backdrop for the informal conversations about people’s quality of life.

• As an organisation Free Form has over 35 years experience empowering tenants and residents to take and active and informed interest in their environment, which brings a new dimension to the design and development team.

• Involving a creative team brings a different, and often, more holistic perspective to the process.

• Involving the Safer Spaces at an early phase can ensure that the final development is distinctive and has community involvement built in from the beginning. This can be very useful in terms of securing long-term outcomes such as community cohesion.