Jackie Murdo believes the only way out of the current housing crisis is to involve tenants more in decisions
Call me a pessimist but whenever anyone says to me look how far the housing sector has come and how much it has achieved, I immediately think the opposite.
Instead I look at how far housing has stalled on the various visions, benchmarks and targets government ministers and sector leaders have set.
It’s neither a glass half full or empty approach. I take a similar tact when it comes to underachievement in the sector and defend its progress.
By doing so I like to think this gives me some objectivity of the sector. Likewise I constantly compare Scotland’s social housing sector to that of England.
Some would suggest there is no comparison, given we’re 5.5 million souls against 55 million. On the contrary I think England is a helpful barometer as to how we can avoid the crisis that is just around the corner.
Greater tenant involvement means money gets better spent and resources are distributed more efficiently
Jackie Murdo
In London I worked on resident involvement strategies. Basically this approach is designed to involve more tenants in decision-making processes about their homes, and embed the concept of resident engagement into all housing roles from estate services to asset management.
Sounds complex but it’s not. It’s all about greater democracy – the stuff that came to the fore last year during the independence debate.
Greater tenant involvement means money gets better spent and resources are distributed more efficiently and Scotland’s councils need to get real and embrace this strategy.
It often means the local authority is given precious insight into the needs of communities – where many are often clueless.
Call it participatory democracy or whatever but if you get people making decisions that affect them directly then you get happier, healthier tenants.
There’s little of this happening in Scotland.
A smattering of the more progressive local authorities have decent networks of tenant groups and include them in discussions but when it actually comes to important changes in their locality, I’m not convinced these have an impact.
The problem here is local councils still wield too much power in their local area.
Central government needs to step in here and make it incumbent upon our 32 local authorities to develop strategies to include tenants groups’ as part of the decision making processes that affect them.
There also has to be evidence these groups’ recommendations have been acted upon.
There’s optimism this strategy could be enacted in Scotland but there still appears to be a whole load of excuses preventing it from happening.
I can’t actually see why. If Scotland really is the modern, progressive country that’s blazing a trail on the world stage, how come our housing policies don’t seem to reflect of this?
Jackie Murdo was a veteran housing campaigner in London before moving back to Scotland in 2013. She now volunteers on the board of a homeless charity and helps refugee and asylum seekers settle in rural areas.
