Housing Day: a chance for the sector to show off its impact
Housing staff are resilient and enthusiastic about their work, but they need to get better at talking about it. In a week's time – a live tweetathon will help.
When you say you work in social housing – what preconceived responses does it conjure up? Many of these will be negative, born through years of stereotyping. Over the last decade, housing organisations have undergone an enormous amount of change. For many now, it's not just about bricks and mortar – but real care for the people who live in their homes.
Social housing accounts for one in six of all UK homes. Despite this many of the frontline services provided every day go unnoticed. And the housing sector is not great about sharing the impact we have on people's lives. There are many diverse services we offer: providing affordable family housing; supporting young people; tackling antisocial behaviour; improving community cohesion; helping people access education and training; getting people into work; helping tenants start and run their own businesses; as well as everyday essential housing repairs and customer visits.
My communications role gives me a unique insight and chance to speak to hard working housing employees, to understand their day-to-day work. I see that they go about their business with enthusiasm and pride. Even if they have transformed peoples' lives with their decisions and actions – it's not in their make-up to shout about what they do. But there must be an opportunity to open the door to the fantastic work our people do – and a #HousingDay tweetathon could be the key.
For a 24-hour period on 13 November we're urging all those involved in housing from landlords, tenants, suppliers and workers to share their 'day in the life' stories using 140 characters on Twitter.
The benefits of getting involved will show our housing work takes place 24 hours a day. From the pre-dawn environmental street and garden services, to taking care of the elderly in residential schemes and handling late-night emergency callouts – housing work never stops. Twitter can quickly let customers know what we are doing in their area and alert them to services they may need.
We can also help publicise how housing is taking up new communication channels. These new channels offer us an ability to engage locally via social media. We can stay in touch directly and quickly with people in their local communities and they can access services and engage with frontline workers instantly.
It will be great if housing organisations up and down the country can get behind #HousingDay to celebrate what we do. Even tweeting about the most trivial activity can show the difference we make and the sometimes life-changing impact we can have.
We'll be tweeting about #HousingDay from our customer service centre and out in our local neighbourhoods at @YHousing. And we'll look to see tweets about what's happening in your organisation. Please don't miss this great chance to showcase the brilliant and unsung work that goes off every day. We have a good story to tell in housing; we should be passionate and proud to tell it.
So please follow us and join in with #HousingDay.
Adrian Capon is a member of Yorkshire Housing's communications team. #HousingDay was conceived with help from the Northern Housing Consortium and Tenants Participatory Advisory Service
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