Telling Stories in the Housing Sector

It says something about the nature of Britain right now that when you scan your preferred news platform and read about damp and mould it isn’t long before you see that it’s the councils and housing associations that are getting blamed for the poor state of these homes.

What these nuggets of wisdom always seem to forget – unless you read the Guardian of course – is that the welfare state has been under attack for a very long time, and this has impacted negatively on the finances of councils and registered social landlords whose job it is to make homes habitable.

The unspeakable tragedies that have beset this sector in recent years have highlighted the dangers of ignoring faults in building design and failing to repair aging housing stock.

The removal of cladding in many high-rise blocks, upgrading fire safety systems and the necessity to eradicate mould from homes is expensive. Very, very expensive.

When you add the costs of these life-critical remediations to the costs of upgrading housing stock to meet NetZero, a vivid picture emerges of a sector struggling to pay for everything, everywhere all at once.

But there are other factors too that are less visible and obvious to the eye which impede the work of housing associations - and these challenges all stem from the ‘A’ word.

Let’s face it Austerity just means cuts. And it is not a recent trend. It has been the big government pill that we have all had to swallow every day for the last 15 years or so. And guess what, austerity has a compound effect.

If the 100 year-old wall at the end of your garden is crumbling, its structural integrity is hardly like to improve if you simply leave it as it is.

Extrapolate this analogy of a crumbling wall to any of the cornerstones of a caring society such as education, health, emergency services, mental health provision and it quickly becomes possible to see that these are interconnected; each service running smoothly helps to alleviate the stresses and strains of the other.

Austerity has impacted the work of housing associations in a myriad of ways.

A lot has been said about the social and affordable housing sector morphing into a kind of fourth emergency service. While some in the sector don’t think the term Fourth Emergency Service is a particularly useful description, our documentary style filmmaking in this sector has shown us that there is a strong ring of truth to it.

Decades of cuts and slashed budgets for the Police, Social Work and Mental Health Services combined with the cost-of-living crisis has meant that in many of the more marginalised housing estates, social landlords have become the de facto frontline response service.

At Paper Films we have spent much time shadowing community engagement officers as they go about their day. We’ve captured them on welfare visits to the elderly, checking-up on the vulnerable and filmed them provide a point of trusted human contact in an environment where human contact is sometimes best avoided.

From our experience of filming with housing associations and talking to the outreach teams it seems to us that their work is super-critical; who else is going to engage with those on the margins of society?

If there’s an anti-social behaviour incident on the estate at midnight, who gets to the scene first?  If a resident suffering from serious mental health issues is wandering around the streets the chances are that it’ll be the neighbourhood officer who residents call first. That’s because they know that the police won’t get there for hours, or even show up at all.

The housing sector has been battling government cuts and constant regulatory change for years. And yet up-and-down the country it’s the RSLs who are working with charities to provide community foodbanks, discount grocery stores, running debt-management clinics and providing community rooms with free WiFi and hot drinks: heating in the winter and ice-pops for the kids in the summer.

Housing associations provide spaces where the isolated can feel a bit less abandoned, and for those who live in fear of crime (real or imagined) they provide a touch point to a kind of humanity where people do actually matter.

We think that housing associations should be using video production to tell these stories and celebrate the role they play in society

The point here is that stories are important whether they are true or not. And you need to be telling your true and uplifting stories and setting the narrative. Capture and celebrate what you are doing at this point in time in 21^st Century UK, or the important role that you are playing in society risks being forgotten and overshadowed.

We are a video production company specialising in changing the narrative of housing associations. We spend time with you, your residents and your colleagues. We tell the heart-warming stories that shine a light on the work that you do all day, every day, year in and year out.

We are Paper Films and we would love to collaborate with you.