Recently we’ve been exploring necessary steps that will need to be taken in order to allow future social housing communities to flourish. In this regard, we are not giving consideration to the benefits, whether actual or imaginary, that derive from mixed income housing.
Strong communities suggest the possibilities of active, positive community involvement, including the will to address community problems and to promote or choose constructive pathways to address and heal community problems. Whether largely middle-class dominated communities have some special advantages in creating healthy mixed class communities is not really the issue.
What is of growing concern is that government funding for mixed communities is hostage to the profit-making needs of the Public Private Partnership arrangements that almost inevitably form the foundation of mixed income social housing solutions. After years of experimentation, it’s clear that for better or worse, PPP arrangements have yet to provide the volume of social housing that is needed in many, if not most, countries.
Which leaves tomorrow’s larger low-income-only social housing projects to deal effectively with chronic social housing problems that have plagued low-income communities, such as crime and drug use.
One of the most significant issues related to social housing tenants’ attempts to police their own communities has been the degree to which they are able to engage the support of management, which is inevitably preoccupied with budget restrictions. In the face of problems such as building repair, or building security, it seems that there is a management culture of pushing all responsibility down upon the tenants, rather than balancing complex issues by at least partially pushing back on management’s ultimate masters — the funders.
Previously, we’ve looked at two ‘hopeful’ approaches that allow tenants a greater say in the solution of the problems they face. One looks at the potential of ombudsmen, who examine the roots of a social housing problem, and have at least some influence in triggering ombudsman-recommended solutions.1
A second, would be shifting social housing management away from penny-pinching — a decades long manifestation of ‘small-government’ policy.2
What follows is an exploration of another practical solution for achieving some social housing improvements that often lock management and tenants in debilitating battle. That solution is mediation. Read more in NEXT CITY: Helping Tenants and Landlords Resolve Issues — Before Going to Court
