The 'See the Person' Campaign to tackle stigma in social housing
continues to make progress following the election of the new Tenant Leadership Committee chaired by ARCH
Tenant Group member Martyn Lund.
The whole committee continues to play an equal role in leading
the campaign and in future all campaign communication will come
from seethepersoncampaign@gmail.com and
this will be the main communication channel with the committee.
The 'See the Person' Campaign aims to tackle the common
misrepresentations of social housing tenants in the local and
national media which often include inaccurate perceptions, such as
tenants being associated with exploiting the benefit system and
living in run down estates. These misrepresentations are damaging
and drive the public to have a typically negative stereotypical
view of social housing tenants.
The Campaign is sponsored by 26 housing organisations across the
country (including ARCH) and has commissioned an academic research programme into the
problem of stereotyping social housing tenants to deliver a high
impact campaign that will challenge the way the public think and
tackle the stigma associated with social housing tenants.
The Campaign is starting recruitment for a part time member of
staff to support the committee and thanks those sponsoring
organisations, including ARCH, who have made a financial
contribution to support the appointment. The Campaign will shortly
open to new sponsors and supporters.
The next campaign meeting will be at Homes in Sedgemoor on 19
September in the afternoon (the committee will meet in the
morning).
In the meantime, the Campaign has embarked on several pieces of
work:
- The Campaign Committee is looking for tenants to provide blogs,
videos or articles and will be launching #100voices in support of
the #councilhouse100 social media campaign to insist that the focus
of any new social housing building programme must be on people. Any
tenant interested in knowing more or in contributing should contact
the 'See the Person' Campaign at seethepersoncampaign@gmail.com.
- The Campaign Committee continues to meet with the Housing
Ministry and will shortly share the results of the survey
undertaken recently. The Committee feels it is important that the
Campaign is non-party political and wants to speak to 100 MPs about
the Campaign, gaining their support and trying to establish an
All-Party Parliamentary Group or similar. Again, any tenant
interested in knowing more and who would like to have these
conversations with their local MP is asked to contact the 'See the
Person' Campaign via the above email address.
- Sadly, stigma perpetuated by social landlords formed a
significant part of the feedback to the Campaign's recent survey.
In response, the 'See the Person' Campaign will be developing a
toolkit for landlords.
More information is available via the 'See the
Person' website and social media which will shortly be
updated from the previous campaign title of "Benefit to
Society".