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The housing crisis among the sector’s staff
An exclusive survey by Inside Housing has revealed that many social housing staff are battling housing insecurity and fearing homelessness themselves. Katharine Swindells digs into the findings
Sam Jones* spends all day on the phone to tenants of the housing association where she works, but the customers on the other end of the line don’t know that she doesn’t have somewhere of her own to call home. Since a relationship breakdown five years ago that left her homeless and in debt, the 32-year-old has been sleeping in her mum’s living room.
Ms Jones’ full-time salary as a customer service agent for a housing association in the Midlands is less than £30,000, which is not enough for her to rent privately in her area. She grew up with the instability of private renting, living in homes with damp and mould, and her family was evicted multiple times. This made her passionate about good housing.
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“What I do actually matters, because I’m helping people with their home. I absolutely love my job, but I can feel frustrated. Some people don’t speak to us very nicely and I sometimes [think] when someone’s complaining about their house, ‘At least you’ve got one.’”
She is bidding for social housing, but as a single person in work, she is rated in Band 4, the lowest priority. “I keep bidding on places and I don’t get anywhere, because there are people in more desperate need and not enough housing stock. But a private rental is just not something I can afford,” she says.
Staff in the social housing and homelessness sector see the impact of the housing crisis every day, but many of them also experience it first-hand, as they struggle with insecure, poor-quality homes or skyrocketing rents.
How is living in these conditions affecting the sector’s workforce? And how is it affecting their ability to deliver for their organisation?
To find out, Inside Housing surveyed more than 200 staff living all over the UK and in a range of tenures. Three-quarters of respondents worked for housing associations, 60% were in customer-facing roles, and half were on salaries of less than £40,000.
Our survey paints a worrying picture, particularly for staff living in the private rented sector (see chart, below). More than half (55.9%) say that if they lost their job, they would “quickly and easily” be at risk of homelessness, and a quarter (27%) say that if they spoke to a customer or a client in a similar situation, they would consider them ‘housing-insecure’.
Three in every four staff members who rent privately are spending more than 30% of their salary on rent.
One survey respondent wrote: “Several times I have been forced to move, as the landlord wanted to sell the property, and then struggled to afford somewhere else in the same area as private rents are so high.”
This is not the first time we have written about this. In 2017, prompted by a remark made by Kate Davies, chief executive of Notting Hill Genesis (NHG) at the time, Inside Housing collected testimony from hundreds of staff members about their experience of housing insecurity.
Seven years later, Ms Davies still vividly remembers the conversations she had with junior staff about their experience of the housing crisis. She found the stories “shocking and sad”, but understood that it was not unusual. “It’s just an insight into living in London: you need a job, but are completely priced out, so you have to settle for awful conditions. It was a wake-up call for me.
“The irony is that, as a housing officer, if one of your clients, customers or tenants came to you with that problem, how would you react? And yet you’re putting up with it yourself,” Ms Davies says.
Since then, the housing crisis has worsened: land registry data shows that the average UK house price increased by 30% between June 2017 and June 2024.
Rents have also reached record highs, increasing by 38% in London in those seven years, and a staggering 68% in the rest of the UK. The pandemic drove rents sky-high in the capital, with average asking rents rising 18% between 2021 and 2022 alone.
Rachael Williamson, head of policy and external affairs at the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH), says these conditions have a detrimental effect on organisations’ morale, output and recruitment.
22%
Frontline staff who say they sometimes get frustrated with their organisation’s clients or customers because their situation is as bad as or worse than theirs
35%
Private renter frontline staff who say they sometimes get frustrated with their organisation’s clients or customers because their situation is as bad as or worse than theirs
“The results of this survey highlight some of the very real challenges facing the sector workforce, who are not immune to cost of living pressures. Staff who are worried about their own housing and financial stability are more likely to experience burnout, reduced productivity and higher turnover, which add to the strain on an already stretched workforce.”
Alison Inman, former president of the CIH, worries that the housing crisis is causing “a gulf between the top of our organisations and people on the frontline, and it’s getting wider and deeper”.
“It used to be that people who worked in housing on the whole were well housed. They were either living in social housing themselves, or they bought, or had lifetime tenure in the private rented sector,” she says.
Lack of empathy from housing staff for tenants has been a criticism of the sector in recent years, and these findings could shed some light on why this is happening.
The survey found that more than a fifth (22%) of frontline housing staff surveyed say they sometimes get frustrated with their organisation’s clients or customers, because their situation is as bad as or worse than theirs. Among customer-facing staff who rent privately, this rises to 34.5%.
Ms Inman says: “Your job is to deal with people who have the two things that you want most in the world: a lifetime tenancy and sub-market rent. How can we expect staff to have empathy with the people who’ve got everything they want, when they have none of it?”
In 2022, Cara Pearson* bought a home, in the hope of beginning the adoption process. But just months later, a restructuring at the housing association she works for in Wales reduced her salary by hundreds of pounds a month, and it barely covered her mortgage.
“The house now feels like a shackle around my neck,” she says, as being a homeowner meant she was not eligible for housing benefit or other support. She found herself using credit cards to buy food and essentials.
Ms Pearson’s salary has now been adjusted, but the experience of 18 months living with nothing has led her to withdraw from the adoption process. She is part of the 43% of housing staff who say money and housing worries have affected their decision to have children.
“My housing situation and finances meant I have been unable to proceed with my dream of becoming a parent, missing out on a whole part of life,” she says.
Ms Pearson has always loved being a housing officer, but it has become more and more difficult to keep her job and personal life separate.
“I try to remain professional and never show that I haven’t eaten, or that I’ve just used the last of my petrol to get to their property to conduct a visit, and they are not home despite making appointments,” she says.
“I have some beautiful tenants, but sometimes it just sucks when you are, in fact, in a worse situation than them, yet they have so much more support and disposable income and security of tenure.”
It is an uncomfortable truth, but the data shows that Ms Pearson is far from alone in feeling this way. If a staff member is terrified about their own housing security, or commuting for hours every day, it is unsurprising if that affects their patience and friendliness with tenants.
Staff members’ own homes may also desensitise them to poor housing conditions. An operative may not consider black mould in an older person’s home worth flagging if they are used to it in their own home.
The CIH’s Ms Williamson says: “While finances may be stretched, housing providers and employers have a responsibility to support their staff by creating a work environment that supports employee well-being.”
In response to staff members’ housing difficulties, NHG implemented two schemes: providing interest-free loans for private rented sector deposits; and allowing staff to apply for its SimpliCity housing, at 20% below market rate. NHG says the two schemes are still running, with a few staff members taking them up each year.
But Ms Davies acknowledges that offers like these are “a bit of sticking plaster”, and sees it as the responsibility of the sector to advocate for “a product for the squeezed middle”, like shared ownership. “Unless the government is making some subsidy to help this group, they really are under pressure,” she says.
Recent years have seen the social housing sector under the spotlight for tenants being treated with a lack of empathy. Without tackling the epidemic of housing insecurity among staff, no amount of company training will solve the problem.
*Names changed
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