Home truths

Empowering experiences
A new web application is being developed to help the tenants of social housing developments feel a greater sense of community, empowerment and confidence in their dealings with landlords.

OurHousing is a not-for-profit web platform that aims to become a trusted intermediary for tenants and social landlords alike. At least 3.6m people in England live in social housing – whether in sheltered accommodation or in shared ownership schemes. Yet engagement between residents and their landlords is traditionally low, with poor communication often cited in tenant complaints.

Greater understanding
OurHousing will provide an online space in which tenants can share their stories publicly. They will be able to express their views and experiences and find communal support for issue resolution.

Landlords will be encouraged to respond and work with their tenants to re-design the services they are delivering to better meet customers’ needs. They will also benefit from being able to perform real-world benchmark checks and get a more realistic and genuine appreciation of their tenants’ opinions, the moment they are expressed online.

The stories will be positive as well as negative, and will help open dialogue – to ultimately improve all aspects of social housing service delivery.