Is the sector providing healthy homes?

Financial pressures

Yet how best to create healthy homes that contribute to well-being is a challenging question, particularly given financial pressures affecting social landlords and residents alike. It is a multi-faceted and complex area, involving consideration of factors including damp, excessive cold or heat, mould, noise and overcrowding.

Thinking through such challenges is the aim of Inside Housing’s Healthy Homes campaign, in association with safety tech specialist Aico. It launched in April with a survey of over 200 people in the social housing sector, with the aim of understanding their views on how effectively the sector is creating healthy homes.

The 210 respondents were drawn from across the UK, with over half (54%) employed by a social landlord. And for many of them, how homes might be limiting the well-being of residents is a cause for concern.

When asked how well they thought social homes in the UK support the health of those living within them, two-thirds offered a cautiously optimistic view. These respondents said social homes were generally well suited to supporting the health of those living within them, but that they had concerns in some areas.

More notable, however, is that nearly a third of those who answered the survey said they had “serious” worries about how the UK’s social homes are affecting the health of those living in them.

“It is striking that 30% of people believe homes are seriously impacting the health of people in them and shows they know this is a problem that needs fixing,” says Chris Jones, chief executive at indoor air monitoring technology provider HomeLINK. On the one hand he finds this result worrying. But on the positive side, he adds: “At least it shows there’s an awareness of these issues and a motivation for change.”

The survey results suggest awareness is now particularly strong on issues of damp and mould. It was named by more than half of respondents as the area causing them the most concern when thinking about how homes might affect resident health. Interestingly, the second-most frequently named issue – overcrowding of properties, cited by 16% of those completing the survey – contributes to the most frequently named issue. Asked to explain why damp and mould was their biggest cause for concern, respondents were divided between those who thought it was the most commonly occurring health risk in social homes (42%) and those who thought it was likely to have the biggest impact on well-being (52%).

There remain worries about how well landlords are able to understand which homes are presenting such risks. A quarter of respondents described their organisation’s knowledge on this as “poor” or “very poor”. Asked to describe the main reason for such challenges, they spoke of insufficient communication – whether with residents, repairs staff or other organisations that have a relationship with residents.

In considering the biggest change social landlords could make to improve the healthiness of homes and residents, one respondent spoke of “getting to know the home and the customer”.

54%
Respondents who named damp and mould as their biggest concern related to health

16%
Those that named overcrowding as their biggest concern – second to damp and mould

40%
Respondents that said improving communication was crucial to creating healthier homes

“Just because customers don’t report everything doesn’t mean we don’t still have a responsibility to check,” continued the respondent, who is a head of
asset management. “‘We didn’t know’ is no good to anyone and a poor response in today’s world.”

Another respondent argued landlords need to “gain a better understanding of tenants’ health during the life of the tenancy”. “We only know what we know, and people’s situations and circumstances change – which we are not always aware of until there is a problem.”

Rapid response

Where there is knowledge of an issue, though, the majority of those who completed our survey expressed confidence in the ability to respond rapidly. Some 75% said their organisation was able to respond “swiftly” or “very swiftly” when an in-home health risk is identified.

Responding swiftly is not necessarily synonymous with resolving quickly. This was a theme raised by several respondents. One officer working in housing management and tenant services reported that in the past two years, their organisation had made “significant progress” on identifying damp and mould issues.

“I think the focus now needs to be on the follow-up work with residents surrounding this. We need to be continuing post-inspections to ensure damp and mould issues don’t return.”

Another respondent, an officer working in care and support for a social landlord, said: “Don’t just inspect and recommend [when a health-related risk emerges]. Actually fix, and then follow up – has it worked?”

“Responding swiftly to a health risk is important,” Mr Jones says. “But, say with damp and mould, if you respond in 24 hours, clean the mould away, paint over it and then it comes back again and the resident is afraid to complain, then you’ve not solved the problem. Perhaps the first-time fix mindset has made people want to optimise things so that if they are called out, they can leave the house on that day and show they have done a good job. But then there is the potential issue of problems coming back and getting worse.”

It is a reflection which again speaks to the role of communication in addressing in-home health risks. And while half of respondents said their organisation was good at sharing information about risks with other relevant bodies, 40% said improving such communication was crucial to creating healthier homes.

This contention is not born out of a belief that health sits outside the purview of landlords, however. Some 133 out of 210 respondents said identifying residents whose home is harming their health is a “central responsibility” for the sector. How best to discharge that responsibility, and what it means, is a matter for debate – and is at the heart of the Healthy Homes campaign.

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