Here's Kate Davies, Chief Executive of Notting Hill Housing, writing as chair of a group report on housing poverty for the Centre for Social Justice:
'At Notting Hill we have found that our tenants generally dislike “collective” solutions. They appreciate help and opportunities to improve their situation (e.g. training, work, financial advice) and that of their children. We have far more interaction with our residents as individuals than as a group. Much of what they discuss with us is personal - debt, children, relationships with neighbours. And most of our help is devoted to improving social skills and encouraging social mobility.'
Gnarled old community development folk like me may dismiss such points a bit too readily sometimes, but I suspect there are two awkward forces that help explain the position.
One is the residue of consumer individualism, like it or not - people have been encouraged to think of themselves as independent of social systems, to disparage collective responses and to blame individuals for their circumstances.
The other point is the uneven experience of good community development practice in housing associations. I'm ready to hear that Notting Hill Housing has exemplary CD practice, but all the same I believe that where it's carried out properly, people are enlightened about collective solutions to their problems and will often mobilise to transform them.
We know that many poeople do not see their problems as systemic, and do not anticipate that there might be collective solutions: that's the whole point.
The housing poverty report needs to be read as a contribution to the social policies of a Tory party which aspires to govern before much longer.
Research conducted for the exercise found that nearly 50% of social housing tenants did not trust their neighbours. The report recommends 'releasing some of the value in social housing to sitting tenants who pay their own rent and make a contribution to the community.'
It goes on:
'the most radical approach is also the most important. We recommend that economic analysis be commissioned into the rewarding of constructive behaviour in the community, including, but not limited to, a genuine effort on the part of a social housing tenant to find work, by giving social housing tenants increasingly larger equity stakes in the home.'
So it looks as if the carrot-and-stick policy approach to behaviour is likely to be with us for some time. Does anyone have an alternative?
