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Hattie was the driving force behind the merger through which Eastlight Community Homes was created in July 2020.
Her vision ...more
Discretionary funds are paternalistic and unsustainable – we must be more creative
Tenants are facing a huge cost-of-living crisis, and landlords need to respond in a less paternalistic way, argues Hattie Llewelyn-Davies
With the cost-of-living crisis set to get worse, the standard response from housing associations is to plough more money into their discretionary funds, which tenants and residents can access to meet certain short-term financial needs.
Our customers shouldn’t have to rely on asking us for handouts. If we are the community-based organisations we say we are, and we care as much as we say we do, we must challenge ourselves to find more creative ways to empower people through tough economic times.
“Our residents shouldn’t have to ask us for handouts, and we shouldn’t be the ones to deem whether they’re deserving of them”
Like many other housing associations, 12,500-home Eastlight Community Homes made the difficult decision to increase our rents by Consumer Price Index plus 1% this year. This – plus National Insurance rises and massively increased energy bills – mean our tenants, who’ve already experienced two difficult years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, are likely to face greater financial struggles during 2022 and beyond.
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To simply offer them the opportunity to dip into a larger – but still not bottomless – pot of money if and when their situations become dire enough, is both insufficient and unsustainable.
It’s also rather paternalistic – our residents shouldn’t have to ask us for handouts, and we shouldn’t be the ones to deem whether they’re deserving of them.
Admittedly, Eastlight does have a discretionary fund – but we’re also pushing ourselves to go far beyond this and do more to provide opportunities our residents can use to improve the quality of their lives, for the long term. This involves thinking creatively, looking outside of our organisation and drawing inspiration from the work of others.
“We’re hiring 20 local residents as community entrepreneurs who will be paid a salary of £26,000 to spend a year improving lives within their communities”
Since the formation of our resident-led community gateway organisation in July 2020, we’ve been working on some big, trailblazing, Eastlight-grown ideas, which are now coming to fruition.
For example, we’re currently recruiting customers to our up to 10-strong Customer Influence Committee, who will work up to 15 hours per month and be paid around £4,700 per annum – plus expenses. We’re also keen to recruit more residents to our board and committees. As board members, these residents will be paid £8,500 per year.
Through our All In initiative, we’re hiring 20 local residents as community entrepreneurs who will be paid a salary of £26,000 to spend a year improving lives within their communities. Working in four teams, the residents will each create a bold new solution to a big social issue, before making it happen in their community.
We’ve received 185 applications to join the teams – based in Colchester, Braintree, Witham and Halstead – and the next step is to hand over decision-making power to the 20 individuals who understand their communities better than anyone.
While Eastlight will provide expert support throughout, our new team members will have the freedom to choose the issues they want to address, and how they should be tackled.
We’ll be doing whatever we can to share the progress of these initiatives with the wider housing sector (and beyond), so others can potentially adapt them for use within their own organisations.
In the meantime, we’re constantly on the look-out for ideas that are working for others, so we can consider how Eastlight might adopt them. If anyone reading this knows of any ideas they think could benefit others (they could be very tiny or really big), then please get in touch. The Eastlight team will be able to create a bank of initiatives for others to access.
We’ve spent a year working in partnership with disability organisation Purple to support disabled customers, who are disproportionately impacted by the ‘cost-of-living crunch’. The Trussell Trust’s State of Hunger report, published in May 2021, found that more than six in 10 (62%) working-age people who were referred to food banks in early 2020 were disabled.
“As our customers’ lives are impacted by external factors beyond their control, we cannot rely on tried, tested – but still limited – ideas”
We’re committed to continuing our partnership with Purple, which has access to ideas from across a wide range of sectors, to identify ways we can make sure the opportunities we are offering are accessible to all residents. Again, we’ll be sharing what we learn far and wide.
We’ve also spotted that an increasing number of local authorities, including Essex County Council and Sandwell District Council, are offering residents the opportunity to join energy auctions to help them to collectively secure lower prices. We’re now exploring how we could do something similar for Eastlight residents, probably in partnerships with other housing associations to increase our buying power.
As our customers’ lives are impacted by external factors beyond their control, we cannot rely on tried, tested – but still limited – ideas. But we also cannot possibly find the answers to all the challenges we’re currently facing by ourselves.
As a sector, we must get even better at sharing our ideas, helping one another to maintain and build on our understanding of the issues our customers face, and to explore new ways to support and empower them.
Eastlight has a very strong ethos of working in partnership with others who might have more resources, expertise or experience than we do. We know this will help us provide a better service to our residents. The world is fast-changing, and we’ve got to adapt, dig deep and keep up.
Hattie Llewelyn-Davies, chair, Eastlight Community Homes
