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Home as a place of harm

The government’s advice to “stay home and stay safe” will prove to have been a significant misdirection for many people. That is why we need to rethink how we provide housing and support, writes Tony Stacey

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“For many people the government’s admonishment to ‘stay home and stay safe’ will prove to have been a significant misdirection. That's why we need to rethink how we provide housing and support,” writes @TonyStacey #ukhousing

“We need to move away from the mistakes of the past and co-design our new normal with tenants and residents,” writes @TonyStacey #ukhousing

I was on the phone to a friend of mine when he got a message to go to his daughter’s home as a matter of urgency.

He rang me half an hour later and simply said: “He’s killed her.” She had three children who are now, effectively, orphans. Their father is unlikely to be let out for many years.

Her funeral took place last week and was attended by just six people because of COVID-19 restrictions. Her murder was picked up in the national news as one of a number of women killed by their partners since lockdown.

For many people the government’s admonishment to “stay home and stay safe” will prove to have been a significant misdirection.


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In Out of Harm’s Way, a brilliant article for the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE), Dr Craig Gurney lists 10 ways – in addition to domestic violence – in which the home can become a “lightening conductor for harm”.

He puts it simply: the home is the place of most health-harming behaviours, including suicide, sedentarism, over-eating, coercion and injuries.

Then there’s the impact of the near house arrest that has been imposed on us all, and the isolation that results. South Yorkshire Housing Association has run the Age Better programme in Sheffield for the past five years, tackling loneliness and isolation faced by people aged over 55.

We know only too well the impact of loneliness on health. You are better off smoking 20 cigarettes a day than being lonely.

Research cited by Dr Gurney into the psychological effects of quarantine periods of no more than 21 days during outbreaks of SARS and Ebola found evidence of post-traumatic symptoms. We can only guess at what is developing right now within the four walls of many of our homes.

At South Yorkshire Housing Association (SYHA) we moved into our new offices just before Christmas. The threshold stone we walk over every day says “Come Home”, part of our new brand and a reference, of course, to Cathy Come Home.

Why? Our answer is that “with SYHA you can settle, live well at home and realise your potential”.

But what if you can’t? What if you have to work from home in the future and there isn’t the space to accommodate living and working space? What if, for you, privacy is not a holy grail but a shield for abuse or self-destruction?

Our chair is Professor Ian Cole, who recruited Dr Gurney to his first academic post.

He circulated the article to a number of people at SYHA, and it has got us all thinking hard.

We are about to turn our attention to reflecting on the implications of the lockdown on our future policies and practices.

Here are a few personal, and very much preliminary, thoughts:

  • We need to think again about our approach to safeguarding – surely we need a far wider remit in the future.
  • Our approach to tackling domestic violence was shunted forward by Alison Inman and the Chartered Institute of Housing’s work, but we can still do far more.
  • Britain has some of the smallest housing in Europe. Ditching Parker Morris space standards with no replacement was a mistake – we must remedy this in the Future Homes Standard, or in our own design briefs.
  • We need to think critically about what it is that makes a home a secure, stable and safe place when we get it right.
  • Public health and housing were the same thing in the 19th century. The lockdown suggests a rapprochement may be in order.
  • We seem to have shifted back to a narrative of the professional as hero in the past few weeks. Where are our customers in this, and what has their experience been? We need to co-design our new normal with them.

Dr Gurney concludes that “during the COVID-19 pandemic, home might not offer the nourishing, stabilising and comforting inoculation against uncertainty that we would ordinarily expect”.

So how do we design our homes and services to future-proof them and our customers not just against the possibility of a new pandemic, but also against other threats that may or may not be on our risk map?

I don’t know about you, but a pandemic was not on ours.

Tony Stacey, chief executive, South Yorkshire Housing Association

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