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Put tenants first and cure our housing crisis

This opinion piece is over 8 years old
 

​Jackie Murdo believes the only way out of the current housing crisis is to involve tenants more in decisions

Call me a pessimist but whenever anyone says to me look how far the housing sector has come and how much it has achieved, I immediately think the opposite.

Instead I look at how far housing has stalled on the various visions, benchmarks and targets government ministers and sector leaders have set.

It’s neither a glass half full or empty approach. I take a similar tact when it comes to underachievement in the sector and defend its progress.

By doing so I like to think this gives me some objectivity of the sector. Likewise I constantly compare Scotland’s social housing sector to that of England.

Some would suggest there is no comparison, given we’re 5.5 million souls against 55 million. On the contrary I think England is a helpful barometer as to how we can avoid the crisis that is just around the corner.

Jackie Murdo

Greater tenant involvement means money gets better spent and resources are distributed more efficiently

Jackie Murdo

In London I worked on resident involvement strategies. Basically this approach is designed to involve more tenants in decision-making processes about their homes, and embed the concept of resident engagement into all housing roles from estate services to asset management.

Sounds complex but it’s not. It’s all about greater democracy – the stuff that came to the fore last year during the independence debate.

Greater tenant involvement means money gets better spent and resources are distributed more efficiently and Scotland’s councils need to get real and embrace this strategy.

It often means the local authority is given precious insight into the needs of communities – where many are often clueless.

Call it participatory democracy or whatever but if you get people making decisions that affect them directly then you get happier, healthier tenants.

There’s little of this happening in Scotland.

A smattering of the more progressive local authorities have decent networks of tenant groups and include them in discussions but when it actually comes to important changes in their locality, I’m not convinced these have an impact.

The problem here is local councils still wield too much power in their local area.

Central government needs to step in here and make it incumbent upon our 32 local authorities to develop strategies to include tenants groups’ as part of the decision making processes that affect them.

There also has to be evidence these groups’ recommendations have been acted upon.

There’s optimism this strategy could be enacted in Scotland but there still appears to be a whole load of excuses preventing it from happening.

I can’t actually see why. If Scotland really is the modern, progressive country that’s blazing a trail on the world stage, how come our housing policies don’t seem to reflect of this?

Jackie Murdo was a veteran housing campaigner in London before moving back to Scotland in 2013. She now volunteers on the board of a homeless charity and helps refugee and asylum seekers settle in rural areas.

 

Comments

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Trevor
over 8 years ago
I agree with Ms Murdo, but I doubt very much that the people in charge of providing Housing would be willing to allow Tenants to have their say in the way Housing is provided? the standard process is that the people in charge use words such as "regeneration" to give the impression that conditions will be changed for the better. but enough time has passed to prove that though buildings are demolished and rebuilt, it is almost certain that the standard of the building will be low. simply cause the people that will occupy them tend to be working class and I realize now that they tend to be the ones that end up living in regenerated "havens of torment." However if one happens to be rich you get the very highest quality possible. in this country we are treated according to the class system. what the poor get is always of a low standard in comparison to the rich. is it any wonder that mental health problems are often linked to poor quality housing? whereas the rich are unlikely to feel depressed in their homes, simply cause the class they are part of ensures that they get the best housing possible. councils love to say things such as "we are listening" to the cries of the working class, but their actions in terms of having poor quality housing built again and again suggests to me that they are not listening at all. the day the quality of "social housing is raised" and maintained that is when we can at last breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the councils have finally "listened" but I think that before that will happen pigs will fly in the sky, and since that of course will never happen, likewise it is safe to say that the councils and Councillors and developers and government ministers will never truly listen to the common people.
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