Social housing and quality of life: ensuring homes and neighbourhoods are decent, safe, and of a good standard
by Melissa Lacide, Senior Engagement Officer
The need for good quality housing, good practice resident involvement, and meaningful community engagement is something that many agree is important. Indeed many who are working across the built environment sectors aspire to embed best practice within their context.
More often than not though there is a clash between the theory of best practice and the reality of delivering it – funding is cut or squeezed; team capacity is limited due to time constraints or a shortage of skills; organisational structures or sector systems are not always designed to support or regulate this.
The value often gets forgotten about or left out of the process of ‘doing’ a project or ‘delivering’ a service.
To the detriment of communities, their participation is often seen as a nice to have, an add-on, a tick box exercise, or, quite simply, less of a priority. The reality of implementing this in practice is different in each context and how well or badly it’s done impacts on quality of life in communities.
At the Foundation our community engagement is shaped around:
- capturing the voices of residents
- listening to people from a range of backgrounds and all walks of life about their lived experiences
- understanding the impact that their homes and neighbourhood have on their quality of life.
More often than not, residents say that a sense of pride in their community is affected when buildings aren’t looked after, neighbourhoods are managed poorly, and shared spaces are of bad quality.