What exactly is Housing Management?

If you own your own home you will probably manage it yourself. You make sure your home is repaired when it needs it, you pay the mortgage, the insurance and any standing charges. You do the gardening from time and time, and stay cordial, if not friendly, with your neighbours. If you are a flat owner its a bit more complicated. You have to pay service charges, there are communal areas you share with others, and there is most likely a managing agent who provides some landlord duties on your behalf, for a fee. If there is an issue with the cost or quality of the service you have the ability to challenge the provider.

How does social housing differ?

Unlike a buyer who, subject to their income and capital, is free to choose what, where, how old and how big their home will be, a social housing tenant is constrained by what they are “entitled”. This depends on their “needs” as determined by the local housing authority. For example a family of four (one adult and three children) should “qualify” for a three bedroom home, or even a four bed if the children are older. Younger children, or children of the same sex are expected to share. There is no expectation of a garden, and no right to any specific facilities beyond the home being adequate. This will include cooking facilities, but not necessarily a fridge. It will include floors but rarely carpets. It may include heating but not necessarily a shower. There is unlikely to be a washing machine or anywhere adequate to dry clothes. There will be some storage but not as much as most people need. The home will usually be second hand, or third or fourth actually. A small per centage will be newly built but most homes will have been social housing for decades. The layout and fixtures are probably old and worn, and maybe broken or missing. All these shortcomings will probably cause issues, disatisfaction, and perhaps a feeling that being a social tenant is being second class. Disatisfaction can include unhappiness with the condition of the home leading to repairs or improvement requests, complaints about the cleanliness of estate or safety of the block or local area, asking to move to a better area or bigger home, or challenging the cost of the rent or service charges. All of these issues become the workload and concern of the housing management team.

Housing association rents are low, reflecting the “needs” of its residents. Many are in low paid work, or are not working, often due to age or disability. Many will need help from Universal Credit to pay the rent. The claiming of benefits to bridge the gap can be arduous and hazardous. Often a housing association will offer to help residents get help with their rent. But for many people paying the rent is a struggle, alongside all the cost of living pressures that they face. About half the tenants in social housing will be behind with their rent at any one time, and a few will be in very severe arrears. Obviously housing staff will have to spend a considerable part of their week focused on rent collection and finding ways to help people to pay.

Then there is the issue of the communal areas. All flat dwellers have issues here but tensions are heightened when people with very different needs are living together in close proximity. Increasingly large numbers of people are offered social housing because of issues they suffer beyond a financial barrier to accessing market housing. People who have been homeless, perhaps street homeless, people fleeing war zones, large families and people with disabilities, people with mental health issues, young people. leaving the care system, frail pensioners – the system offers help to people who need it. But problems care arise and the housing officer needs to resolve the issue for the individual and also when tensions or problems arise between people. This can become very problematic and hard to resolve if residents or their visitors cause disturbance or active difficulty for their neighbours. Anti-socail behaviour can also take up quite a lot of time.

Finally housing staff will have work associated with moving new people in, and dealing with properties and the aftermath when tenants die or move out. This doesn’t happen very often as social tenants rarely move, but it can involve many hours.

Many aspects of these jobs could be automated, especially the more routine work. If automation and AI were fully deployed much of what we know as housing management could be taken over by machines, leaving the dedicated and creative housing officer to help residents with the really tricky issues that we have focused on here.