Pitch your Workshop Week: Albyn Housing Society, Shelter, Social Bite & Community Housing Scotland + HSCHT

Pitch your Workshop Week: Albyn Housing Society, Shelter, Social Bite & Community Housing Scotland + HSCHT

RSLs, Public and Third Sector organisations were given the opportunity to pitch for a workshop slot at this year’s Housing Scotland Annual Conference. Each day this week we will feature a selection of the workshops in HST. On Friday, once all workshops have been announced, voting will open and delegates will be asked to vote for four workshops they want to see at the conference using our interactive platform Slido.

Details of how to vote will be announced on Friday and voting will close the following week on Wednesday 15 May so make sure you get your votes in!

Todays featured workshops are:

Pitch 4: Communicating Universal Credit to Millennials by Albyn Housing Society

Millennials (anyone born between 1977 and 1997) are Albyn’s largest population of customer. They are responsible for the largest proportion of accounts in debt and have the biggest average debt (£550 compared to Baby Boomers whose average debt is £225). They are also responsible for most of our UC claimants.   

Albyn recognise that traditional forms of communication are not as effective for this generation and we would be excited to share our new approach with other landlords including:

• Albyn’s UC HUB
• 92% mobile phone data and 60% email address data held for millennials – how we have increased this.
• How we use the concept of convenience for communications with this generation group
• Instant gratification communication
• Social media use

 

Pitch 5: Using Empty Homes to Deliver Affordable Housing by Shelter

The chronic shortage of housing supply in Scotland has resulted in rising house prices and rents across the country, as well as contributing to increasing numbers of people homeless or at risk of homelessness. While the Scottish Government has pledged to deliver 50,000 affordable homes over the lifetime of this parliament this will only go part of the way to meeting the country’s housing needs.

At the same time, there are currently more than 39,000 homes that have been empty for one year or more. In the run up to 2021 and beyond, it’s time to take a fresh look at the resources we have.

Bringing empty homes back into use can make a significant contribution to increasing housing supply and achieving the affordable homes target. They are also a more cost-effective and community-oriented way of providing new housing than new build properties are. This workshop will look at what empty homes have to offer to housing associations and ways to unlock the potential they offer.

Pitch 6: Loving Housing by Social Bite

Social Bite and GHN are leading the largest Housing First project in the UK, with a target of housing 830 people by March 2021. By giving people with severe and complex needs a home of their own, we are turning the conventional ‘staircase’ model of homelessness on its head. International evidence demonstrates that Housing First has huge potential to tackle chronic homelessness, achieving tenancy retention rates upwards of 90%.

By June, we will have released guidelines for Housing Associations who are considering involvement with this new paradigm. One of our early findings has highlighted the crucial role that Housing Officers can act as a key point of contact for vulnerable people. We want to collaborate with delegates to learn from one another and create an achievable, engaging strategy which will include housing officers in our movement to end homelessness, for good. 

Pitch 7: Community Led Housing by Community Housing Scotland & Highlands Small Communities Housing Trust

Community Led Housing is recognized as one way in which communities can address the shortage of appropriate housing in their areas.  It also offers Housing Associations opportunities to develop partnerships with communities allowing the development of sites which may prove difficult due to location, cost, political issues or land availability.  These partnerships can be synergistic and projects out with the scope of either working independently can be successfully implemented.  Our proposed workshop would set out the key elements of Community Led Housing including funding, management and tenures models and use real life examples of Communities and Housing Associations working together to develop housing which benefits both.

You can view the full list of workshops here.