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What do we actually mean by tenant empowerment?
When we talk about empowerment through customer service choices we are not actually giving tenants power, argues Steve Sharples
In a recent editorial welcoming the launch of the National Housing Federation’s (NHF) ‘Together with Tenants’, Martin Hilditch argued that this NHF approach sought to “transform the balance of power between tenants and associations”.
Now the idea that the relationship between tenants and their landlords can be characterised as involving a ‘balance of power’ is very much at odds with the self-representation increasingly being offered by the social housing sector itself.
This now tells us that what binds landlords and tenants is the nature of the ‘customer experience’ made available to the latter by the former.
“The idea that the relationship between tenants and their landlords can be characterised as involving a ‘balance of power’ is very much at odds with the self-representation increasingly being offered”
In fact, the very term ‘power’ is firmly avoided by landlords in characterising their relationship with their tenants. They generally have no difficulty, it is true, in endorsing the concept of tenant empowerment.
Empowerment represents those well-tended uplands permanently lit in benign sunshine, and is absolutely a ‘good thing’.
But power, as in ‘tenant power’, connotes images of housing association chief executives being drawn on tumbrils to some grisly fate, while being beaten as they pass by tenants carrying the latest Socialist Worker placard.
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Yet, the concept of ‘empowerment’ is simply the conceptual extension of the concept of ‘power’ itself.
And, as the Oxford English Dictionary notes, to empower someone is ‘to give power’.
Some might argue that giving tenants a positive customer experience must itself be an act of empowerment.
Tenants who are subject to that experience now have many more ‘choices’ about what services they receive, and how they receive them.
But if this is the case, what type of power does being empowered by having such choices represent? Is it the power over someone or something? Is it the power to achieve some outcome?
“‘Tenant power’ connotes images of housing association chief executives being drawn on tumbrils to some grisly fate”
Or is it the power with others to achieve an outcome? And which of these is present when there is the change in the ‘balance of power’ between landlord and tenants, that Martin Hilditch envisages?
If we can’t successfully answer that question then we can’t successfully counter the charge that empowering tenants through customer experience only ‘empowers’ by not giving tenants any actual power.
However, if tenants have truly now become ‘customers’, does that matter anyway?
Steve Sharples, director, PS Consultants
At a glance: the NHF’s Together with Tenants plan
Together with Tenants is a draft plan drawn up by the National Housing Federation (NHF) with the “aim of creating a stronger, more balanced relationship with tenants and residents”. As of 13 March, 86 associations had signed up to it.
The NHF says a stronger relationship is needed after questions were raised following the Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017.
The aim of the plan is to introduce new expectations at board level; set clear commitments for tenants and residents; and give tenants and residents a louder voice, a stronger rule in scrutiny and more influence locally and nationally. It also aims to “provide a clear link to regulation”.
The plan proposes four actions:
- A new requirement in the NHF’s code of governance for boards to be accountable to their tenants and residents
- A new Together with Tenants charter setting out what tenants and residents can expect from their housing association landlord
- Tenant and resident oversight and scrutiny of the charter, with a report on how their landlord is doing against the charter commitments
- A closer link with regulation
The housing associations signed up to Together with Tenants
As of 13 March, 86 housing associations had already volunteered to be early adopters of the Together with Tenants plan. They are:
- Accent Group
- Accord
- Alpha Living
- Anchor Hanover
- Arawak Walton
- Arhag
- Aspire Housing
- Beyond Housing
- Black Country Housing Group
- Bolton at Home
- Broadacres
- Broadland Housing Association
- Byker Community Trust
- Calico Homes
- Clarion
- Coastline
- Colne
- Community Gateway Association Preston
- Connexus
- Cotman Housing Association
- County Durham Housing Group
- Derwent Living
- EMH Group
- English Rural
- Estuary Housing
- Gateway Housing
- Gentoo
- Gloucester City Homes
- Great Places Housing Group
- Greenfields Community Housing
- Hastoe
- Home Group
- Incommunities
- Islington & Shoreditch Housing Association
- Johnnie Johnson Housing
- Lincolnshire Housing Partnership
- LiveWest
- Livin
- Living+
- Luminus Group
- L&Q
- Manningham Housing
- Metropolitan Thames Valley
- Mosscare St Vincent's Housing
- Network Homes
- North Star
- Ocean Housing Group
- One Housing Group
- Ongo
- Onward
- Optivo
- Orbit
- Origin Housing
- Peter Bedford Housing Association
- Phoenix Community Housing
- Places for People
- Plymouth Community Homes
- Radcliffe Housing Association
- Radian
- Raven Housing Trust
- Riverside
- Rochdale Boroughwide Housing
- Rooftop
- Rosebery Housing Association
- Settle
- SHAL Housing
- Shepherd's Bush Housing Group
- Soha Housing
- South Lakes Housing
- South Western Housing Society
- South Yorkshire Housing Association
- Sovereign
- Stonewater
- Suffolk Housing
- The Community Housing Group
- The Pioneer Group
- The Wrekin Housing Trust
- Together Housing Group
- Torus Group
- Trent and Dove
- Wakefield and District Housing
- WATMOS
- Women's Pioneer Housing
- Wythenshawe Community Housing Group
- Yarlington
- Yorkshire Housing