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Special Report

ON

In this report
David Done of RHP on innovative cultures
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Darrin Gamble of Bromford
on neighbourhood coaching
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5 innovations that will transform housing

THE FUTURE
OF HOUSING
CONTENTS.
Welcome 3
The Opportunity: Plugging Social Housing In To A Brighter Future 4
The Catalyst: Future Housing Lab 6
Q&A: David Done, Chief Executive, RHP 13
The Future Housing Lab approach to social housing & assisted living 32
Q&A: Fuad Mahamed, ACH 17
Switch up the future of homes and communities 21
Q&A: Darrin Gamble, Bromford 27
Sparking people-centred innovation: The Bristol Approach to Citizen Sensing 33
Our story 36

The Future of Housing / Page 2


WELCOME.
For the first 10 years of my life I lived in military housing; always good
quality buildings, always well maintained. Then my dad left the army
and we moved into a private rented house in Carlisle.

It was a disastrous experience. We did our best to


do it up, but the roof leaked and put paid to all of
our renovations. The heating was always on the
blink, and the frost caused all kinds of problems.
And there was no action or redress from the landlord.

Then things got worse. My dad left home and my sister


become very ill. Thankfully, at that point we were able
to move into social housing. This was critical, if not life-
saving, as my sister recuperated. Life on the estate wasn’t always glamorous, but my family
now had the fundamental stability of safe, well-heated home on which to build our futures.

So the importance of access to an affordable, well-maintained property is not an abstract


concept to me. It gives me an extra spur when The House works with social landlords to
transform their businesses and deliver more innovation and impact. I believe in this sector,
and I know that it can change people’s lives. Not just by housing those in need, but also by
leading the way in transforming how we build homes, how we live together and how we
build communities. At its best, it can make us into better people.

That’s why we’ve created this special report. We wanted to showcase the amazing work
being done by housing associations like RHP, who put innovation first and foremost. Like
Bromford, who are investing in creating neighbourhoods, not just houses. Like ACH, who
have become experts in getting their tenants, including resettled refugees, into real
careers. And most of all, to show how delivering impact in the right way can and will
make social landlords more sustainable.

Sharing these stories is important. But we want to do more.

After working with a number of housing associations in recent years, we saw an


opportunity to spark real change across the sector. That’s why we are very excited to
announce the launch of Future Housing Lab, a new collaborative network that brings
together a range of housing, smart tech, purpose economy and culture change experts.
Our goal? To help housing associations foster teams that thrive on curiosity and innovation,
and ultimately transform their businesses to better deliver bold and creative ways of
problem solving.

We are proud to act as Future Housing Lab’s lead partner, and would love to talk to you
about how we could help your business.

Steve Fuller, Co-Founder of The House

The Future of Housing / Page 3


THE OPPORTUNITY:
PLUGGING SOCIAL HOUSING
IN TO A BRIGHTER FUTURE.

State of play:
Today, over 1 million families are currently looking for a place to live.
This is just one of the many pressures and problems facing the social
housing sector:

• Growing conflict between cost of housing, provision of care, affordability, responsibility


and profitability
• Increasing fuel poverty
• Rising energy costs and poor energy performance of ageing housing stock transferred
from council ownership
• Community fabric under stress
• Lower aspirations from low income households
• Entry level cost of buying a home too high / unaffordable
• Not all developers meet their commitment to provide affordable homes

At the same time, the world is changing. Growing social need, shrinking public spend and
the development of alternative institutional infrastructures for driving impact , e.g. impact
investing and social impact bonds, will redesign the architecture of social change.

This creates a fresh opportunity for housing associations to re-align their culture and
organisation from a commercial real-estate management approach to a societal impact,
profit-for-purpose approach – and thus reconnect with their original mission. We aim
to support this transformation, working alongside other innovators (because no-one is
smarter than everyone) and directly with housing associations to deliver change at pace.

Future Housing Lab brings together a group


of clever and compassionate thinkers and
doers to ask the right questions and help
create useful, forward-thinking solutions.

The Future of Housing / Page 4


We see a fresh opportunity to bring together technology, design and innovation thinking
that connects people to the outside world, reducing isolation and making it easier for
people to build communities. An opportunity to build quality of life, not just houses.

Join us. Let’s work together to:

• Create new ideas, build partnerships, develop strategies and build the team capability
to deliver them.
• Engage in consultation, curation and implementation to explore future ideas, scenarios
and new use cases.
• Develop technology solutions that bridge the information and technology gap between
people and places, creating better user experiences and increased operational efficiency
• Connect people to place – through information, accessibility, inclusion, safeguarding and culture.

Benefits for all

Housing Associations People Centred


• Solve real problems • Human and sustainable - people and
• Create positive impacts purpose
• Develop innovation cultures • Inclusion, safeguarding and accessibility
• Explore new solutions • Enhance community or independence

Technology Outcomes
• Hardware, software and cloud-based • Deliver social and commercial impact
partners • Make operational cost savings
• IOT, AI, health tech and connected devices • Utilise design thinking principles
• Ever-growing need for extended • Measure and adapt
healthcare in the home, including
monitoring.

MEET THE FUTURE HOUSING LAB


Steve Fuller – Co-Founder
To drive rapid change, you have to focus on what matters. I help creative leaders to craft
purpose-led visions and narratives that excite and inspire, clearing a path that unleashes
business momentum.

This leaves you with a business that is focused and future-fit, ready to solve the big
problems in housing.

The Future of Housing / Page 5


THE CATALYST:
FUTURE
HOUSING LAB.

The House is partnering with a network of


smart tech, innovation and housing experts
to create Future Housing Lab.
Housing associations are under more pressure than ever to innovate services and find ways
to do more with less. At the same time, demographic shifts are changing what people need
from their homes, neighbourhoods and communities, while technological advances are
changing what a home can be and do.

How can today’s social housing providers make sense of the opportunities and challenges
of the present, and build the innovative cultures of the future?

That’s where Future Housing Lab comes in. We help you to:

1. Solve real problems


As experts in purposeful business and the mission-driven business, we understand the
real world challenges you face. This means that we ask the right questions and help you
develop the right answers.

2. Use design thinking


Cutting-edge processes and tools will help you understand customer needs, capabilities
and opportunities. Your team will benefit from the guidance of world-leading experts in
the Internet of Things (IoT), smart cities, hardware, software, home building, energy grids
and social enterprise.

3. Develop innovation cultures


To succeed, you must develop your people in parallel with adopting and innovating new
tech solutions. Our team includes radical (but easy to work with) thinkers who know how
to develop cultures of curiosity.

4. Deliver social and commercial impact


We are committed to long term, value-creating transformation for customers and the
social housing sector as whole. To achieve this, we will help you to identify and realise
strategic opportunities to generate social and economic sustainability, hand-in-hand.
In short, Future Housing Lab will help you create the homes, that build the
neighbourhoods, that make for smarter towns and cities.

The Future of Housing / Page 6


Smart technology has the potential to transform how housing associations deliver
services and create impact. But it’s not about asking which smart technologies are
available. It’s about asking why smart technology is needed in the first place.

Future House Lab puts people first. Our human-centred approach allows us to work with a
range of tech, software, health tech and hardware providers to build customised solutions
around the needs of our clients and their customers. For us, it’s not about creating
expensive, speculative tech design concepts, but about doing more for less and creating
practical solutions to problems faced today. Less “what if?” and more “what now?”

By putting people at the centre of innovation and tech strategy, housing associations
can seize opportunities to increase social impact while making their businesses more
commercially sustainable.

That’s what Future Housing Lab


is here to do. What could we
do for you?

The House is lead partner of


Future Housing Lab, an initiative
to help housing associations
transform housing for the better
through innovative cultures,
clever problem-solving and
people-centred tech strategy.
To find out more about how
we could help you, call us
on 01225 780000 or email
graham@thehouse.co.uk.

Meet The House


In a country where 1 million families are looking for somewhere to live, we help social
housing leaders to create organisations with the clarity, capability and confidence to
turn purpose into action.

This powers growth and creates dynamic cultures of curiosity, innovation and problem
solving.

The Future of Housing / Page 7


Q&A: David Done, Chief Executive, RHP

David Done , RHP. Photo credit: RHP

How RHP has built an innovative culture that leads the social housing sector

Providing safe and sustainable housing for all is one of the world’s biggest challenges.
To achieve this goal, housing providers of all kinds need to tap into innovation and
fresh thinking.

This is especially true in the social housing sector, made up of companies with social missions
who are under increasing pressure to do more with less. By embracing new technologies
and rethinking old ways of working, future-focused social landlords are transforming their
commercial capabilities and thus enhancing their ability to deliver social good.

RHP is one such organisation. Whether it’s prototyping modular homes or pioneering an
all-digital service, RHP’s 256 employees are leading the way in creating innovative solutions
to housing challenges. That’s why the social landlord, which manages over 10,000 homes in
London, regularly tops innovation rankings within the housing association sector.

Purpose spoke to chief executive David Done about how RHP has managed to build and
maintain a culture of innovation, and how the housing association is tackling the 21st
century’s most critical housing challenges.

The Future of Housing / Page 8


Q. Why is innovation so important to the future of the social housing sector?

The challenge for housing, and indeed for any business, is to deliver higher and higher
quality services while reducing costs. That requires innovation. Innovation allows us to
deliver a more efficient, value-for-money service for customers, and it allows us to release
savings and resources to build more homes.

There is a huge shortage of housing for people in this country, including young people
who now have no chance to get on the housing ladder. As a sector, we have to stay super-
innovative to respond. That includes changing our mindset about what people want and
need from a home.

Q. What stops some housing associations from


thinking innovatively?

Bear in mind that many housing associations have


been around for a long time. The more history
there is, the harder change can be. I think that’s We see innovation as
true of any organisation. the most critical factor
for our future success.
The other thing to understand about housing is That’s reflected in
that people are just really busy running housing how we lead, and in the
services and building homes, so creating the
environment we create.
space and environment for innovation can be very
difficult.

Q. What steps have you taken to build a culture


of innovation at RHP?

We see innovation as the most critical factor for


our future success. That’s reflected in how we lead, and in the environment we create.

It’s vitally important that people at all levels of the organisation can speak openly about
the challenges we face and what we’re trying to achieve. So we create lots of opportunities
for people to talk, and great ideas come out of that.

The Future of Housing / Page 9


Q. How exactly how you create these
opportunities?

Some of the opportunities come from natural


processes within the business. We are great
We are constantly believers in team huddles and briefings, where we
coming across all talk about the issues of the week.
kinds of interesting
But we also host more structured forums
companies doing work for people across the business to come
around reimagining together. For example, we run our “4x4” sessions,
housing, and we want a Dragon’s Den-style event where colleagues
to position ourselves pitch new ideas to each other – four ideas for four
to partner with them. minutes each – which we then vote on. We also
have a debating society where people discuss the
issues of the day, which also tends to spark some
great ideas.

We look outside for inspiration as well. We’ve had


a bomb disposal expert come in to talk about risk
management, Gerald Ratner talking about resilience and bouncing back, and a professional
poker player talking about taking risks. People come out of those sessions buzzing, and we
talk about the ideas for days afterwards.

Q. How do you then translate these ideas into action?

Crucially, we back up promising new ideas with real resources. We put real budgets behind
them, give our people a proper amount of time to invest in developing them, as well as
providing them with coaching and support to take the ideas forward.

Q. What kind of failure rate is acceptable for new ideas?

We take a balanced and sensible approach. While we are involved in a lot of amazing
creativity and innovation, our starting point is always to make sure that we do the simple
things really well. We are very careful about risk - we’re not gung-ho about doing things
and not worrying about the consequences. We’re constantly trying things out, taking
measured risks.

That said, we’ve fostered a culture where it’s OK to fail. It’s understood that not every
innovation will work.

Q. In your view, should housing associations be seeking more inspiration from outside
of the sector?

Definitely. We are constantly coming across all kinds of interesting companies doing work
around reimagining housing, and we want to position ourselves to partner with them. Tech
companies are doing extraordinary things to make homes better places to live and easier
places to manage. Take modular housing: you can build components in a factory, deliver

The Future of Housing / Page 10


them by lorry and kit them out with digital service
systems so that people can pay rent and order
repairs online. All of those ideas are coming from
the service and technology sectors.

The way people live We are tapping into this by deliberately recruiting
people from a range of different sectors outside
is changing, and their
of housing, including tech. This has really
housing needs are impacted our culture and our way of thinking, to
changing along with the point where it’s become a defining feature.
that. This means that People from these sectors are used to working
the range of houses creatively – in fact, they expect it.
we need to provide
is becoming more We’ve also taken part in a housing startup
diverse all of the time. incubator, which gave startups a chance to
work closely with us, get access to our data, and
develop projects. We worked with seven different
startups, all of which were based in our office for
several months. This meant that our employees
got to mix with people who have a totally
different way of thinking.

Q. What’s the biggest challenge in building and maintaining an innovative


culture in the social housing sector?

Perhaps our main challenge is attract and retain the best people. We are trying to find
people who want to change the world in big and small ways, but those are the same people
that all leading companies want! So we have to position ourselves as one of the best
employers in the UK, even though housing has not always been seen as the most attractive
place to work, despite the increasing creativity in the sector.

Q. Which changes and trends require the most innovation on the part of social landlords?

The way people live is changing, and their housing needs are changing along with that.
This means that the range of houses we need to provide is becoming more diverse all of
the time. That’s what’s great about modular tech: it allows us to build more cheaply and
quickly, but also more flexibly.

We are experimenting with much smaller homes for single young people, many of whom
are currently living in shared houses or bedsits. Take our LaunchPod house, designed for
single young people in West London. That’s a really good example of how we are rethinking
what a home looks like, in order to serve an emerging market’s needs. This is already a
massive trend all over the world, not just in the UK.

The Future of Housing / Page 11


From a service perspective, we’ve seen that people now want to have instant access to
businesses – they are used to superfast, easy access to day-to-day normal things. We’ve
learnt from this and responded. For example, we realised that many people don’t want to
phone us: they want to go online to pay rent or book a repair, and they want to be able to
do it from any device.

That’s why we became the first housing association to deliver a fully digital housing service.
75% of our customer service business is now done online, compared to a standing start 7
years ago. It’s a massive shift, and people were unsure if this was a right way to go, including
some customers. But we realised that if we didn’t invest in it now, it will likely create
challenges in the future. We are now also looking at applications for Alexa-type voice control.

Q. Are you investing in smart city technology?

Absolutely. Technology is changing everything, and can change the way we deliver housing
services in ways we never would have thought of five or ten years ago.

We basically innovate in two main ways: we deliver the traditional housing model digitally,
and then we try to imagine and design ahead of the future. That means both thinking about
how you build the house in the first place, i.e. modular housing, and then thinking about
what you put in those homes to make them brilliant places to live. You want them to be a
real joy to live in, as well as being easy to manage, because that frees up more resources to
build more houses.

For example, we are speaking to companies about new battery tech that allows residents
to store energy for use at peak times and drive down fuel bills. There are also devices that
can help to monitor the activity of vulnerable people, and let loved ones know that they are
OK. And finally, there is now tech that allows us to predict when appliances and things in
homes break down, which both saves us money by reducing service costs and improves life
for the customer.

The Future of Housing / Page 12


ON
THE FUTURE
HOUSING LAB
APPROACH TO
SOCIAL HOUSING
& ASSISTED LIVING.
OFF

Housing is healthcare

It’s a common refrain among leaders working on public health issues, ranging from
substance abuse, ageism, community fracture, education inequality, loneliness
and safeguarding to obesity and food insecurity.

In fact, we believe that it’s impossible to separate the future of social housing from
the wider challenges around how our society will care for emerging healthcare needs.
And that’s especially true when it comes to the needs of our ageing population.

The good news is that forward-thinking housing associations are well placed to
tackle these problems and deliver more social impact in the process.

Mapping the “Problem Ecosystem”

In the UK alone, there are now over 15.3 million people aged 60 and above – a figure that
is expected to double by 2030. By 2020, elderly people will outnumber children for the
first time in history.

What’s more, the elderly are staying at home longer. Nine of every 10 older adults
tell us they plan to stay in their current homes until someone drags them out.

At the same time, health and social care models are changing in response to three
major trends:

• Health needs are shifting globally towards “lifestyle disease”. In the future, healthcare
will be less about recovery from acute illness and more about prevention and
rejuvenation: a shift from reactive to pro-active care.
• Poor mental wellbeing and isolation are on the increase – and people living in low
quality housing also suffer disproportionately poor health outcomes.
• Social care infrastructure is under pressure, with a £25 billion funding gap facing
adult social care in 2019/20.

The Future of Housing / Page 13


Today, the healthcare system generally treats people when they fall ill. But this care model
will not be sufficient to meet the health needs of a growing, diverse and ageing population
with high rates of chronic diseases, obesity and mental health problems. 21st century
healthcare will need to deliver care that meets the health needs of today and focuses more
on preventing illness and supporting individuals in maintaining active, productive and
healthy lifestyles.

What’s this got to do with social housing?

Put simply, more elderly people and earlier diagnosis of health conditions is creating an
ever-growing need for healthcare outside the home. However, with healthcare budgets
being slashed across Europe, there is not enough space for patients to spend time in hospital.

The question is then: how can we use technology to provide the same healthcare within
the home?

There will always be cases where patients really do need


domiciliary care or to live in a care home. However, there
are many cases where people are still very capable of living
on their own, but just need to be monitored to make sure
they are still living a comfortable and healthy lifestyle.
By adapting its
The opportunities for housing associations are then: approach in order
to help blend
• How can we use technology to promote safety and healthcare into the
deliver safeguarding through unobtrusive monitoring home, the social
and data analytics that provide potentially life-saving housing sector can
care, as well as peace of mind for family and loved ones? thus reinvent and
• More widely, how can we make practical interventions
that keep the elderly independent and active, and allow
reinvigorate its core
people to build and participate in communities and mission and purpose.
shared services?

By adapting its approach in order to help blend healthcare


into the home, the social housing sector can thus reinvent
and reinvigorate its core mission and purpose. Answering
these questions effectively, however, requires us to take a
holistic view of tenants’ housing and healthcare needs,
rooted in a people-centred approach to technology strategy.

The Future of Housing / Page 14


A people-centred approach

At Future Housing Lab, we believe a people-centred approach to assisted living


would focus on three core human needs: connectivity, activity and safety.

People need community, activity and mobility as key components for a higher quality
of life. The research shows staying in your own home provides safety, mental health
benefits and helps community integration.

Elderly don’t want to feel excluded. They want to enjoy their life in their home,
to feel safe, and to have control over it.

For this very reason, any tech-enabled assisted living solution must strike a balance
between monitoring for safety and respecting privacy, and be built on a foundation
of trust and communication.

How smart tech can make homes support health

There are a number of ways that social landlords can weave in light-touch, unobtrusive
smart sensors that will support tenants’ healthcare needs:

• Presence detection sensors: A device that monitors movement e.g. has someone
who usually sits in the living room, moved into that room? If not, a family member
or neighbour could be alerted to check that they are okay.
• Door sensors: If a patient with Alzheimer’s or dementia doesn’t usually leave the house
on their own, you can use a door sensor to monitor whether the door has been opened
(and closed). This sensor would also work as a window sensor to check if it is open or
closed and used as an extra layer of security in the home.
• Vibration sensors: How often is someone moving? Has an individual got out of bed
in a morning or do they have a problem and need some assistance?
• Temperature and humidity sensors: As people get older, they often become creatures
of habit e.g. having a coffee at 8am every morning. By adding a humidity sensor near
the kettle, you can monitor whether the kettle has been used and therefore make an
assumption that the individual has had their usual cup of coffee.
• Water leak sensors: These can alert you if a bath has overflowed.
• “Current clamps”: These allow you to check which appliances are being used.

MEET THE FUTURE HOUSING LAB


Matt Crisp – Strategy & Technology
Good tech strategy is about improving quality of life for customers, not product. I help
leaders to grasp all of full strategic opportunities that tech can offer, creating a solid
commercial plan for where tech could take you.

This builds a culture of innovation and high performance that lets you deliver smarter
and better.

The Future of Housing / Page 15


Blending home and healthcare

All of these sensors are available as wireless and


battery-less devices, allowing an easy retrofit installation,
requiring no maintenance and ensuring the reliability
that is a must for any health monitoring system and by
connecting all of these devices to a gateway using radio
technology protocols, all key data can be pushed to a
A solution that
cloud platform. can help improve
a loved one’s
Family, neighbours and healthcare professionals can then quality of life
be granted different levels of access, allowing them to is likely to be
remotely “check in” on vulnerable residents. The cloud considered by
platform could also send out alerts via an app if there is many, especially
data that suggests a problem or emergency situation. if it can help them
stay in their own
The health and wellbeing of our loved ones will always
be incredibly important. A solution that can help improve
home for longer.
a loved one’s quality of life is likely to be considered by
many, especially if it can help them stay in their own
home for longer.

That’s why we believe that this near-invisible tech will be


the bedrock of preventive healthcare in the future – and
why housing associations are perfectly placed to adopt
pioneering approaches to blending health and home.
Q&A: Fuad Mahamed, ACH

How a forward-thinking housing association has partnered with Starbucks


to get its tenants — including resettled refugees — into work.

ACH is not your typical housing association, but it’s one from which other
social landlords can certainly learn a lot.

ACH provides accommodation to refugees and other vulnerable homeless people in


Bristol, Birmingham and Wolverhampton, as well as taking concrete steps to help them
into work — including challenging perceptions through a campaign to get employers
#rethinkingrefugee.

The story starts in 2008, when a young engineering graduate, Fuad Mahamed, a refugee
himself, saw an opportunity to use his past experiences to offer appropriate help and
support to newly arrived refugees. ACH was born: a social enterprise that specialises in
integrating refugees through accommodation, support and community-based training.
Since then, unprecedented political instability and conflict has resulted in the biggest
movement of people across the globe since World War 2. There are now an estimated
68.5 million displaced people globally, and we are facing the most serious refugee
crisis for 20 years.

The Future of Housing / Page 17


ACH is well positioned to create a positive social impact out of this, by utilising lived
experience to design services that make a real difference to its tenants’ lives. The housing
association now employs over 60 staff, works with 2500 people per year, delivers services
in the West of England and West Midlands, and offers advice and assistance across the UK
and beyond.

Purpose caught up with Fuad to find out what other housing associations can learn
about upskilling and social integration from ACH’s experience.

Q. ACH has now been helping refugees for 10 years. How has your mission and business
developed in that time?

The past ten years have seen a marked change in the work that we do. We’ve evolved
from a small-scale housing provider, located in inner city Bristol, to a leading provider
of resettlement and integration services for refugee and newly arrived communities
in the UK.

We specialise in helping refugees enter the labour market and integrate with society,
by designing various programmes and training opportunities to suit business needs. For
example, we are currently working in partnership with Starbucks to run bespoke courses
that will lead to barista jobs for refugees in Starbucks outlets in Birmingham and Bristol.

This came about following their global pledge to hire 10,000 refugees by 2022, which led
to them identifying four partner organisations to work with in the UK. Refugees are looking
for a chance to rebuild their lives and have a fresh start in the face of extraordinarily
difficult circumstances, and Starbucks believe their talent, experience and resilience will
enrich the communities they serve around the world.

Q. It’s interesting that your services combine housing and jobs. Why is that important?

Providing a roof over somebody’s head is a vital first step in their journey away from
homelessness into independent living. Getting sustainable employment is the final step
on that journey. To achieve this we provide safe, secure and comfortable housing combined
with culturally sensitive support and employability skills training.
Our approach focuses on building individuals’ resilience in the labour market, upskilling and
supporting refugees into sustainable, higher level employment in order to develop their
independence and ease their integration into UK life.

This means working directly with employers. Every year 2500 people across three cities
come to us to access the skills and careers they need, and employers like Starbucks come
to us to recruit work-ready talent.

Working directly with employers makes us more sustainable as a business, as we can


work with them on an ongoing basis to provide staff. Other funding streams tend to be
limited to a small number of years, which then leads to services ending and staff being
made redundant. This model causes harm to the lives of beneficiaries and staff, and we
are determined to move away from it.

Q. Are there special challenges in terms of cultural sensitivity when working with refugees?

Yes, certainly. A number of staff and board members are first or second-generation
refugees themselves, and staff members speak over 30 languages between them, enabling
us to provide services in multiple languages. This diversity and our understanding of local
communities enables us to put the needs of our BAME tenants and learners at the centre
of our work, and tailor our services accordingly.

Q. Do you think it makes sense for other housing associations to invest in improving
their tenants’ employability?

Absolutely. Not only is it financially prudent for them to do so, but as housing associations
we have a duty to our tenants to support and enable them to lead quality lives. Helping
them progress in work or education is key to this.

Q. You’ve grown to over 60 staff now. How do you keep them aligned to your mission,
and sensitive to your customers’ needs?

We recruit with our mission and customers in


mind, selecting candidates we believe can drive
the business forwards whilst remaining true to
our core values. Consequently, we have a very
passionate and engaged workforce who buy into
our vision for all refugees coming to the UK to be Working directly with
successfully integrated into society. employers makes us more
sustainable as a business,
Q. Have you found that some employers are as we can work with them
reluctant to hire refugees? on an ongoing basis to
provide staff.
Unfortunately, yes. We launched the
#rethinkingrefugee campaign in 2015 as a
reaction to the negative portrayal of refugees in
the media. We want to change the perceptions
of refugees and convince employers and local
communities to see them as assets.

The Future of Housing / Page 19


Q. What challenges have you faced in implementing your mission?

At the beginning, we faced challenges around tenants being able to sustain jobs, around
repeat homelessness, and around the lack of a move-on strategy. We found that we were
good at providing supportive accommodation, including mental health support, and at
securing entry-level jobs for our tenants. The problem was simply that this isn’t enough.
We want to build careers, not just fill jobs.

Three quarters of people who take up entry-level jobs remain at that level. We believe that
the communities we serve deserve access to quality jobs. So, over the next ten years, we
will be working with 25,000 more individuals, not simply helping them into entry-level
jobs, but aiming for progression to median-salary positions.

Q. What are the main lessons other housing associations could learn from your
decade of experience?

Well we are certainly happy to work with other housing associations to devise programmes
that will best support and integrate socially-excluded tenants, including refugees.
It’s important for housing associations to recognise that an individually tailored approach
works best in getting the socially-excluded into jobs — that’s why we run bespoke pre-
employment training and selection programmes, offer vocation-specific accredited
training and support pre-selection internships.

More widely, I think that housing associations have a role to play in changing perceptions
of social housing tenants, just as we challenged community and employer misconceptions
about refugees through the #rethinkingrefugee campaign.

The Future of Housing / Page 20


SWITCH UP
THE FUTURE
OF HOMES AND
COMMUNITIES.

We explore five innovative trends and projects


that give us hope for the future of housing
When it comes to creating homes and communities that are smart,
sustainable and fit for the future, the world is in urgent need of
creative leadership. That’s why it’s so inspiring to see forward-thinking
businesses creating commercial solutions to vital housing challenges.

These pioneers are rethinking how and where we live, and proving
that bricks and mortar can be infused with vision, imagination and
innovation.

Here are five trends and projects giving us hope that businesses will
play their part in cracking the global challenge of decent housing for all.

The Future of Housing / Page 21


1. 3D printed homes

What if designing and building a new home could be as simple as tinkering on your laptop
and then pressing “print”? Even better, what if a new home cost less than a new car?
Non-profit New Story has taken us one step closer to making this dream a reality.

Frustrated by slow progress in its mission of delivering decent housing in the developing
world, it searched for an exponential solution. It partnered with construction technology
firm ICON to create a world first: a home that can be 3D printed in just 24 hours at the cost
of $4000.

The 350 square foot prototype was unveiled in Austin, Texas this year,
becoming the first 3D printed house in the US to meet local housing
regulations. New Story now plans to build the first community of 3D
printed homes in El Salvador in 2019. Communities are able to use
ICON’s software to customise their homes to meet specific needs.
Communities
This proves once again that tech innovation doesn’t have to start are able to
with the elite and then trickle down. As WIRED put it: “If New Story use ICON’s
succeeds, the first people to live in a 3D-printed town won’t be the software to
technologists or the futurists of Silicon Valley. They’ll be people in the customise
world’s poorest regions, who most need a roof over their heads”. their homes
New Story’s printed homes might not yet be suitable for UK
to meet
housing. But the non-profit recognised that we need a quantum
specific
leap in affordability, speed, and quality to reach families in need needs.
exponentially faster. With more innovation and risk-taking, we hope
that our own house builders will be able to get to the point where
3D printing can produce homes that suit UK lifestyles and needs.

The Future of Housing / Page 22


2. Internet of Things
The internet of things (IoT) is about more than self-stocking fridges and tweeting toasters.
Low-cost sensors, cloud computing and big data techniques have revolutionised our ability
to collect and comprehend a vast array of real-time data. Used correctly, it’s a springboard
to improve services and design behaviour change interventions.

This gives social landlords a huge opportunity to use IoT to get closer to the heartbeat
of the houses they provide and the people they serve.

Flagship Group, for example, has partnered with a number of local firms in Ipswich to
create a pilot IoT scheme that featured an innovative thermostat designed with social
landlords in mind. Already, its humidity sensors have identified flats with abnormal
moisture levels, allowing Flagship to dispatch surveyors and tackle damp and mould
problems before they arise.

To get tenants on board, the IoT element was bundled with more traditional digital
services such as free wifi, smart locks and open-access CCTV of communal areas. This had
the added benefit of enhancing security, increasing the use of digital customer service
channels from 15% to 70% and reducing arrears by making it easier for tenants to access
housing benefit online.

Whether it’s dealing with noise and anti-social behaviour complaints more quickly,
or alerting the relatives or carers of elderly or vulnerable tenants when their routines
unexpectedly change, the internet of things can and should be as much about tenants
as it is about buildings.

It’s a pity, then, that less than 50% of housing associations rate IoT as important to their
overall strategies, and only 6% have a clear IoT strategy in place. It’s easy to get lost in
the hype of smart cities and seemingly endless possibilities of IoT, but it’s ultimately
about finding an innovation strategy that will get you closer to customers and what
they want and need.

MEET THE FUTURE HOUSING LAB


Rod Newnham – Associate, Technology and Digital Adoption
There’s a lot of pressure when it comes to decisions around technology adoption. I give you
the confidence to make the right choice, and ensure that you have the culture and capability
in place to carry the plan through.

The end result is an uplift in team morale, more trusting relationships and a robust platform
for innovation.

The Future of Housing / Page 23


3. The next generation of modular homes

Imagine a home that can pop up quickly, grow and shrink


according to residents’ needs, and even “up sticks” and
move across the country to where it’s needed most.

This “flatpack future” has massive potential to reduce the


energy, raw materials and waste that goes into providing Best of all,
us with a roof over our heads. Thanks to advances in CAD
technology, 3D printing and engineered timber, today’s modular
modular homes are a world away from post-war prefabs.
Faced with a growing population, an acute shortage of
homes
homes and increasingly mobile and migratory careers can create
and lifestyles, modular homes open up a whole new
world of possibility.
local jobs.
Legal & General Modular Homes is just one of the players
looking to disrupt the home building industry by providing
precision engineered, factory manufactured houses. L&G
claims its homes are better quality, more energy and time
efficient and cost less than conventional methods.

Best of all, modular homes can create local jobs. That’s because they don’t rely on
highly-skilled labour — which is in short supply —  and can instead be built by local
people with no prior construction experience.

No wonder that forward-looking housing associations are creating innovative prototypes


like RHP’s LaunchPod, a 26sqm one bedroom apartment made in L&G’s factory.

The Future of Housing / Page 24


4. Co-living

What do you do with more people and less space? Learn to share better.

Co-living sees neighbours share facilities like living rooms, kitchens and workspaces
under one roof, in order to cut the cost of living and enjoy more opportunities to socialise
with others. It’s an eye-catching trend, but so far only a brave few have embraced
full-time co-living as a lifestyle.

With this in mind, Copenhagen innovation lab SPACE10 and New York design studio Anton
& Irene created a playful project to pose the question: what would you be willing to share?

Over 7000 people took part in the project by filling out an online application form for a
hypothetical co-living space opening in 2030, indicating whether they would be willing
to share kitchens, workspaces, smart devices, childcare and self-driving cars.

The results have been shared on an open-source, anonymous basis, so that anyone
engaged in creating the future of co-living can dream and design better.

MEET THE FUTURE HOUSING LAB


Graham Massey – Co-Founder
It’s people and culture that turn mission into action. By connecting personal purpose to
organisational purpose and aligning values, culture and behaviour, I help you develop an
organisation that is fuelled by belief.

This invigorates the heart of your organisation by allowing you to lead robustly and
authentically.

The Future of Housing / Page 25


5. Community energy
As the scorching, sunshine-laden summer of 2018 has
proven, roofs are valuable resources. If social landlords
could capture the solar power potential of the millions
of social homes in the UK, it could drive a nationwide
renewable energy revolution.

That’s why it was exciting to see Solarplicity ink a £1


billion deal last September to install solar panels on the
roofs of 800,000 social housing homes in England and
Wales over the next five years.

The scheme will see tenants receive free solar


panels, saving them £296 a year on average in power
bills. Social landlords, meanwhile, receive a cash
investment for community projects, or can join an
profit share scheme — all while reducing their carbon
footprint. The deal is expected to create 1000 jobs,
with Solarplicity planning to train military veterans
as solar panel installers.

All in all, it’s an excellent example of a commercial


partnership that benefits tenants, social landlords,
the wider community and the planet.

MEET THE FUTURE HOUSING LAB


Nat Al-Tahhan – Creative Behaviour Change
To make change stick, you have to make it fun for everyone involved. Drawing on my
background in games development and design, I help teams to enable meaningful,
lasting change by providing people with genuinely fun experiences - leading to
smoother and more spirited transformation in your organisation, and better
engagement with both employees and customers.

The Future of Housing / Page 26


Q&A: Darrin Gamble, Bromford

Social landlord Bromford is using “neighbourhood coaches” to build community


and help residents realise their dreams.

In recent decades, forward-thinking housing associations have invested plenty of effort


in making their housing developments more environmentally sustainable, whether
through better recycling facilities, better insulation or even solar panels on roofs.

But there is another dimension of sustainability that is just as important: social


sustainability.

Broadly speaking, achieving social sustainability is about putting the right conditions in
place to actively support people in creating healthy, liveable and resilient communities,
today and tomorrow. It’s what happens when houses become homes, streets become
neighbourhoods, and housing developments become communities.

Bromford is one of several housing associations that are taking social sustainability
seriously. It’s developed a pioneering approach to “neighbourhood coaching” that
helps a diverse range of customers to achieve their goals while also enhancing the
community as a whole.

The Future of Housing / Page 27


The Bromford Deal

At the core of this approach is the neighbourhood


coach, who develops trusting relationships with
each customer. The genesis of this came from
what it calls the “Bromford Deal”. At the core of this
approach is the
Put simply, the customer agrees to pay their rent neighbourhood
on time, look after their home and garden, make
an effort to get on with their neighbours and play
coach, who develops
a part in building a happier neighbourhood. trusting relationships
with each customer.
In return, Bromford offers each tenant the
support of a “neighbourhood coach”, backed
by a team of specialist advisors, to help them
achieve their goals (as well as providing
them with a safe home and repairing what
the customer can’t fix themselves).

Each “deal” is tailored to the individual’s own skills, talents, interests and aspirations.
They may need help getting back into employment, advice on home ownership, help with
managing money better or simply coaching on how to develop a particular skill or access a
specific service. The neighbourhood coach acts as the customer’s first point of contact for
accessing a range of services, and is responsible for getting to know their customers and
building a strong relationship with them.

In this way, the home that Bromford provides becomes a springboard for helping people
achieve what they want out of life.

Transforming the landlord/tenant relationship

There are three key innovations embedded in this approach, all of which redefine
and reimagine the traditional relationship between social landlord and tenant.

First, the approach seeks to shift the emphasis to the customer’s strengths and potential,
rather than defining their relationship with Bromford solely in terms of need and weakness.
The neighbourhood coaches are not there to dip in and out “fixing” problems: their role
is to focus on the positives in people, build trusting long-term relationships and equip
people for success. This requires effort from both sides, unlike a typical service provision
relationship.

Second, the neighbourhood coach is more than simply a customer service manager
who seeks to ensure that customers are happily using Bromford’s own services. Rather,
the coach seeks to connect customers to all local services and assets that might help
them thrive and grow: for example, making better use of parks, allotments, cycle paths,
community centres, gardening clubs or toddler groups, etc.

The Future of Housing / Page 28


Third, the neighbourhood coach’s role is also to connect customers to each other and build
community. It’s the coach’s job to know if a customer is a great baker, can coach football
or is good with computers, and whether they might be able to share those skills with a
neighbour or the wider community. In other words, customers can help the neighbourhood
coach to help other tenants, building a network of mutual support that becomes
freestanding and sustainable.

It’s up to the neighbourhood coach to identify these opportunities and make these
connections, which is what makes the role and programme so innovative.

At Purpose, we were intrigued to learn more about what it takes to get a programme
like this off the ground. We spoke to Darrin Gamble, localities leader at Bromford, about
how the housing association has developed and adapted this innovative approach to
neighbourhood social sustainability.

Q. What was the original inspiration for the Bromford Deal?

It started seven years ago as a direct result of us taking a fresh look at what we were about
as an organisation: what is our purpose, what are we in business to achieve? From that
came our purpose of “inspiring our customers to be their best”.

This was set against a backdrop of radical change in the country, with austerity and welfare
reform high on the agenda. We knew that our customers faced a much more challenging
future, and we wanted to play our part in helping them prepare for it. At the same time, we
were thinking about the 30,000 homes we own, and the billions of pounds we had invested
in them — was there a way to get more out of that investment, rather than just moving
people into homes and managing them afterwards?

That’s where the Bromford Deal came from. We wanted to create a different type of
relationship with our customers. Often, the journey into social housing is about focusing on
need, and what you can’t do. We wanted to tip that on its head. This meant reframing the
relationship to focus on skills and aspirations, while securing a promise from the customer
to make it a proper relationship between the two of us.
Q. How have you developed and innovated the project over time?

The first two or three years of the original Bromford Deal project really gave us a
restlessness to do things even better. We dreamt some new dreams and brought some new
thinking in about how to further reframe our relationship with customers. On the back
of that, we started a further two-year experiment to test a whole new way of delivering
services, centred around coaching and relationships.

We ran a research project alongside this to give it statistical validity, and to learn quickly
where things weren’t working. For example, we initially had different colleagues coaching
our customers in various different areas of their lives. But we quickly learned that people
don’t like telling the same story to three or four people. So we tried investing more training
resources into “multi-skilled coaches”, which became the genesis of the “neighbourhood
coach” concept.

Based on this experience, we completely remodelled our service delivery and launched the
neighbourhood coaching programme in August 2016. We now have 153 coaches, with the
last one brought on board a couple of months ago. They deal with customers directly and
provide help and support across the board, except for a few very specialist services.

Q. How did this transformation affect you as a company?

Culturally, it lit the touchpaper for us as an organisation. It really feels that there is
a complete connection between the neighbourhood coach programme and our core
purpose of inspiring customers to be their best.

Of the 153 coaches, 90 are existing colleagues who have transitioned, while 63 are new
colleagues. The energy that came with the influx of new people, and the new challenges
taken on by those swapping over — it was incredible to watch. There was a real resurgence
in our belief in people and our desire to get better outcomes. And not just among those
153 coaches: it has affected the whole organisation.

That said, it was a big cultural change. A lot of people join the social housing sector because
they want to help people — and for many, that means doing things for people. We wanted
to move them away from that, and towards a situation where we are helping customers do
things for themselves. Moving from being a ‘rescuer’ to being an ‘enabler’ or ‘coach’ was a
big, big change for some of our colleagues.

Q. How did you find the right people to fill the neighbourhood coach role?

We really recruited for attitude. This meant that we could bring in people from all kinds
of different backgrounds: police officers, teachers, ex-DWP staff. All of them brought
different skills and experiences that their fellow neighbourhood coaches could learn
from. It brought a lot of fresh energy into the organisation.

It wasn’t always easy. We learned early on that some of the new coaches were less
comfortable with having more challenging conversations with customers, around things
like rent arrears or anti-social behaviour. These conversations can’t be avoided. In our early

The Future of Housing / Page 30


recruitment, we had perhaps over-egged the positive aspect of transforming people’s lives
while downplaying the tough, practical parts of the role. We lost a few coaches on the way,
but we have rebalanced how we present the role now.

By the same token, a handful of our existing housing managers have made the decision to
move on. These tended to be the ones whose natural style did not fit easily with our desire
to move to a coaching approach to our services.

Q. What have been the big wins so far?

It’s already providing a big benefit for our customers. Over the last six months, 91% of
our customers have said that they get what they need from their neighbourhood coach.
We’ve also met face-to-face with 65% of our customers over the last 18 months — 
and not just to update records, to properly get to know them.

Very few organisations would invest the time and energy in doing this. Housing management
is traditionally very reactive. You only get to know customers when they are in some
kind of trouble, be it rent arrears or antisocial behaviour. We wanted to get proactive
so that we can understand them more and have a more planned approach to what they
want to achieve.

Within the next 12 months, we will have met all 30,000-plus residents, and talked to
them about what they want to achieve and what we can do to help them. It’s a long-term
investment, but we learned from our pilot stage that we have to give our coaches the
time and capacity to build relationships.

Q. This isn’t something that you can impose from the top down. How do you get
buy-in and build trust?

Ultimately, it’s a one-to-one relationship and you have to go at the customer’s pace.
We’ve certainly had cases where residents would initially be anxious to get a knock on the
door from us, but by having a chat and getting to know them, a coach can start to build
trust. Part of it is scale. In the old model, we had housing managers each looking after 500
to 600 homes. At that scale, you can only really be reactive, not proactive. When we started
to pilot changes, we brought this down to 175 homes. This gave our coaches a lot more
capacity and time to develop relationships. You can make visits week after week, which
would have been impossible before.

The Future of Housing / Page 31


The other part is the skill of the coaches. The first skill set we looked for when recruiting
coaches was the ability to build rapport in a wide variety of circumstances. The technical
parts of the role, we can teach — but we need people with real desire and commitment to
help people in that way.

Q. What’s the scale of the investment, and what do you hope to achieve?

We’ve made an additional investment of £3 million a year in the programme, and we expect
it to break even in five years’ time, with the financial outcomes ramping up along the way.
We expect rent arrears to decrease, with more customers being in credit on their rent
accounts. That’s good for us, and good for our customers.

So far, arrears have remained steady, against the expectation that external factors
like universal credit would cause them to rise. We’ve also seen an increase in the number
of customers in credit, a decrease in failed tenancies and a decrease in the number of
anti-social behaviour cases that we take to court.

Q. Couldn’t you just spend that money on building much-needed new homes?

Housing is very high on the political agenda at the moment, and with that always comes a
lot of pressure to focus on building new homes. We are doing that too, of course, with our
housebuilding programme increasing quite significantly through our five-year new homes
plan, but it all comes back to our core purpose.

We believe in people. We are not just a housing association; we are also a people
association. So we have to get the right balance between investing in new homes,
and investing in the people who will live in those homes.

Q. What advice would you give to other housing


associations looking to develop a similar programme?

Figure out what you are about as an


organisation first. Do that thinking upfront,
and then bring in new thinking behind your
vision of what your organisation is.

Also, recognise that it takes time to create


sustained change. It took us seven years
to bring our vision to reality, while trying
and testing all kinds of things along the way.

The Future of Housing / Page 32


SPARKING
PEOPLE-CENTRED
INNOVATION:
THE BRISTOL
APPROACH TO
CITIZEN SENSING
An exciting project in Bristol shows how involving people in
technology strategy can build community, improve housing
and enhance quality of life.

The world is getting smarter. It’s cheaper and easier than ever to use
sensors, cloud computing and big data to build a rich and detailed picture of
how our cities and towns live, move and breathe. Harness this information in
the right way, and we can fix problems and drive behaviour change at scale.

But how can you make sure that the tech doesn’t get in the way of the human?

It’s a real problem. A 2015 report from UK innovation charity NESTA found that
“smart city” solutions often fail to address the issues that people really care
about. Technologists and futurists can easily slip into focusing more on the shiny
new gadget than on the behaviour, values and desires of real-life, awkward,
unpredictable human beings.

The “Bristol Approach to Citizen Sensing” aims to fix this. It puts people and
communities at the heart of innovation, in order to make sure that new
technologies address the needs and priorities of those who will use them.

Smart citizens make smart cities


The Bristol Approach was developed by Ideas for Change, Knowle West Media
Centre and Bristol City Council to enable people to work together to map
problems, decide priorities and construct solutions using sensor technology
and citizen-generated data.

“Citizen Sensing” is all about empowering people to build, use or even


act as sensors, identifying and gathering the data that will help them use
technology for social good. So rather than creating an off-the-peg solution
to a predetermined problem, the Bristol Approach involves asking people what
they care most about. During a pilot in Bristol in 2016, Knowle West Media Centre
did this by running a series of events and jargon-free workshops, and working
with artists to have face-to-face conversations with local people in locations
across the city.

The Future of Housing / Page 33


The number one problem that emerged? Damp housing.

It’s a mundane issue that is unlikely to get Silicon Valley pulses racing, but it’s also an issue
that poses real health risks to families, with low-income households particularly at risk.
If local people take it seriously, it deserves an innovative response.

Co-designing solutions

With the problem clear in everyone’s sights, the next stage was inviting the community
to roll their sleeves up and get stuck into participatory design workshops, maker sessions
and “hack days” in order to find a solution that everyone could get behind.

From this emerged a novel solution: damp-sensing frogs.

These fun, plastic “Frogboxes” contained a temperature and humidity sensor connected
to a basic computer, which collects and saves data every five minutes. Residents who
volunteered to invite the frogs into their homes for a trial period were also given “lily
pad” diaries to help them keep track of everyday activities such as showering or cooking.
Combined with the sensor data, these personal records helped people to better understand
and interpret the data collected and potentially take steps to manage damp conditions.

Subsequent workshops saw local families tinker with and adapt the Frogboxes using
electronics, further increasing engagement with the Damp Busters project.

At the same time, a volunteer team of community Damp-Busters was trained in diagnosing
and tackling damp, complementing the data-driven insights with on-the-ground action.
Experiences and learning from the Damp Busters pilot have enabled KWMC to apply
the Bristol Approach in other projects, such as an air quality programme as part of the
REPLICATE Project in Bristol.

Photo credit: Knowle West Media Centre

The Future of Housing / Page 34


Doing innovation differently

What can the social landlords and civic leaders


who are building the homes and cities of the To learn more about the Bristol
future learn from the Bristol Approach? Approach, visit its website at
www.bristolapproach.org.
If nothing else, it should inspire a sense of what is For help in developing an
possible when an innovation strategy unlocks the innovation strategy that
full knowledge, values and skills of the wider connects technology to real
community it intends to serve. customer needs, get in touch
on 01225 780000 or email
To do this requires leaders to “let go” and open up to steve@thehouse.co.uk.
true collaboration. That’s not always easy, but the
prize is huge: replicating this approach at scale has
the potential to bring about game-changing products and initiatives. And such initiatives
do much more than solve the immediate problem at hand: by enrolling people in the
process, they build common ground, trust and deeper partnerships that enhance
overall social sustainability.

“The success of The Bristol Approach is that it asks, ‘what kind of tech do people need
to reach their goals?’, rather than seeing the creation of new technologies as the main
goal in itself,” says KWMC’s Rachel Clarke.

It’s a lesson all mission-led organisations should take to heart.

The Future of Housing / Page 35


OUR STORY.
We set up The House 20 years ago. In our first
decade we worked with some of the biggest names
in the drinks, retail and entertainment industry,
including Johnnie Walker, Diageo and Swatch.
Working with global brands was a lot of fun, and we sure learned a lot. But one day,
about ten years ago, we had a light-bulb moment.

How much more fun could we have if we used our skills to help businesses and brands
become a force for good?

It was an irresistible thought. Sure enough, we took the leap and decided to put purpose
at the heart of our company. This meant picking up the phone and kissing goodbye to
70% of our turnover (right at the start of a global recession!), transforming our business
model and taking a big leap into the dark.

Well, it was never going to be easy. But was it worth it? You bet.

Our hunch was right: the world has woken up to the massive business opportunity
that lies in tackling our biggest challenges.

Ten years on, and we are part of a global movement of creative and inspired business
leaders on a mission to solve big problems, make money, and have fun. We work with an
amazing band of passionate and talented associates, and wake up every day excited to
help businesses make more good things happen.

That’s why we set up Future Housing Lab, and why we are proud to serve as its lead partner.

The Future of Housing / Page 36


Our job at The House is to
help leaders create businesses
that are a force for good.
www.thehouse.co.uk

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