INVOLVING social housing tenants in policy and practice development that impact them leads to better outcomes, from better services provided to a stronger sense of autonomy and belonging within communities.
According to new research from AHURI, including a social housing tenant voice in policy can lead to a range of positive benefits, particularly as tenants are increasingly present with more complex health, housing and social care needs.
“The guiding principle for tenant participation is that those most affected by a policy or organisational decision ought to be involved in the decision making process,” said Wendy Stone, research author and professor from Swinburne University of Technology.
“Internationally, there is a relatively well-established understanding that complex systems, such as social housing systems, require the viewpoints of multiple stakeholders and that evidence-based policy making is best supported by including diverse voices such as lived experience experts and advocates.”
In Australia however, there are very few tenant participation strategies.
While international strategies have found that participation provides tenants increased autonomy over their living conditions, fosters the acquisition and development of skills such as communication, negotiation and problem-solving.
Gaining these skills can help highly vulnerable groups in social housing with education, employment and societal engagement.
“[Keys for successful tenant program and outcomes] include understanding that tenants and housing providers can have different ideas of what participation should look like and what it should achieve; programs can be compromised by power imbalances between tenants and housing providers, which can limit tenant autonomy and also lead to conflict,” added Stone.
“The culture of the organisations involved in these programs, together with broader public beliefs, can shape the way that people living with housing assistance and other forms of welfare can be perceived.”
“In some cases, there can be an underlying belief that welfare recipients, such as social housing tenants, don’t deserve having a voice at the table. For policy co-design methods to work well, there must be respect and recognition of the expertise of all participants involved in the policy making process, which may require workforce training and changing cultural norms.”
It is also key that the outcomes these processes form a genuine component of policy development.
With transparency provided round how information that has been co-developed is used in policy design and innovation or why their contribution wasn’t utilised.
The Community Housing Industry Association Victoria recently called on the state government of Victoria to invest a further $6 billion into social housing to help the almost 150,000 Victorians currently in housing need.
With the majority of Australians reporting to supporting social housing reforms, with a new Essential Research poll finding more than four in 10 believe the current housing system is “broken”.
