COMMUNITY INVESTMENT- HOUSING ASSOCIATIONS

Community Investment is at the heart of what housing associations do every

day.
It is at the heart of all the building and maintaining of good quality affordable homes
and through the vast range of community programmes which respond to local needs
and help build resilient communities.
Defining this area of operation and measuring its impact and value is becoming
more important. As housing associations increase the diversity of their business and
become more autonomous, they need to demonstrate the value of their work to new
and existing stakeholders as well as to be to secure new funding streams.
The landscape of the state is changing (as are the funding streams) and there are
increasing opportunities, as well as challenges, for housing associations in
developing the reach of their business. Many housing associations are examining
their purpose and considering their involvement in communities beyond simply the
provision of homes.
A typical housing associations community investment strategy might have the
following four areas as possible priorities for focused activity and development:
Employability
Financial inclusion
Digital inclusion
Health and well being
Housing associations ambitions might include how to attract others money to
support its community investment programme. Tapping into income streams and
other resources is critical to achieving wide reaching plans for organisations.
There are a range of state, local and private sources of income that could be
leveraged with a viable proposition but its in the voluntary (Third) sector that we
might be able to add to that income mix.

Critical is to engage local prospects in sharing the vision of a housing associations
Community Investment plans and demonstrating how their support not only adds
value but improves their own standing the community. This means identifying and
packaging schemes, projects and plans that overlap with business and funder needs
and preparing and progressing those bids.
Community strengthening involves an external organisation working in a defined
local community or neighbourhood in a way which builds social capital by tapping
into the skills,

knowledge and experience that residents have and helping them to release that for
community benefit.
Strengthening can come in many forms, including the removal of bureaucratic
barriers, individual and collective confidence building, making new connections and
networking, identifying and supporting community leaders and investing in their
training and skills development
The central aim of community strengthening is to help create, support and/or
develop more self-reliant communities which have a positive and equal relationship
with local service providers and have a measure of control over their own
neighbourhoods.
Community strengthening can also take other forms, including according to HACT:
the provision of support in kind, through unpaid work by the organisations
employees and/or volunteers to work with community organisations and their
leaders to promote and develop self-reliance
asset transfers and/or management agreements for buildings and land within
neighbourhoods, moving overall control from the organisation to a local
community
facilitating and/or brokering positive involvement by other organisations with
an interest in a specific community
partnering with other external organisations to target human and/or financial
resources on specific projects or programmes which help communities
become more self-reliant
the provision of direct grant or loan finance for specific/one-off community-
led or based initiatives



For a no obligation discussion please contact Chris at
chris@chrisbeynonassociates.co.uk. Thank you