As our property funds continue to grow, we are excited to be working with more and more exceptional housing partners, ensuring that we are not only providing more homes for individuals and families who were in a housing crisis but also valuable support to ensure that they can move on with their lives.

We recently hosted our first Housing Partner Forum at the end of 2022 for our National Homelessness Property Fund 2 partners, and were delighted that the fund’s current housing partners were able to join the forum, either online or in person: Let Us (a collective of five housing partners), Developing Health & Independence (DHI), Response, Redwing and Notting Hill Genesis, all sent representatives.

The ambition of this forum is to use the collective experience and genuine understanding of the learning partners to drive real change, not just for the property funds and partners, but sharing best practice and designed interventions throughout the homelessness space.

The forum will take place every six months – our second forum takes place in mid-March - and alternates between geographical locations across the UK in areas where our partners are based. Over time we expect the forum to evolve as more partners join and as it builds momentum, becoming an increasingly interactive and proactive initiative.

The first forum focused primarily on the cost-of-living crisis, with discussions around measures the housing partners are taking in order to help and support their tenants. In a session on the cost of living, Natalie Giles, Service Manager at Bath-based social exclusion charity DHI, presented some of the key interventions they are using to help their tenants during the current cost-of-living crisis, including:

• Identifying properties (and tenants) that are cold, ensuring tenants are maximising their benefits and are aware of energy schemes.
• Tenants signposted to CleanSlate, a south west based charity offering free financial guidance, training-for-employment and support to people on low incomes and facing crisis.
• Data packages are provided to tenants struggling to keep their phones topped up. These packages enable tenants to continue to access their Universal Credit journals so that they are not facing a claim being sanctioned
• Tenants are made aware of how to access foodbanks. DHI also has an fund set aside enabling housing support officers to purchase essentials for tenants where lack of food has been identified on a Friday, tiding tenants over a weekend

Other sessions in the first forum included one led by Lara Norris, Senior Consultant at The Curiosity Society, that focused on the impact achieved and key learnings reported in our latest homelessness property funds social impact report. And a session led by Resonance’s Head of Strengthening Impact Martin Lawson, who presented a session on Project SAVE – an impact measurement and management system being developed and used by our housing partners and tenants as a way to better allocate resources and improve tenant support, thanks to the data and insights the system’s analytics can provide.

Feedback from the forum was positive with everyone who attended gaining from the opportunity to network, share learnings and best practice; we are excited to develop it further.

Nic Pomphrey, Service Lead, Nacro: “Lovely afternoon spending time with passionate and committed colleagues from different housing associations. A great exchange of thoughts and ideas that felt like a good foundation for the group to build on in the future.” 

Paulina Colomby, Director of Housing and Property, Response: “The Housing Partner Forum presented a unique opportunity for the exchange of ideas, resources and solutions between people and organisations who are passionate about creation of thriving communities through delivery of suitable accommodation. I am looking forward to the next session and opportunities for collaborative work.” 

Natalie Giles, Service Manager, Home Turf Lettings, DHI: “It provided a great opportunity to meet with other partners and discuss the impact of the stable housing Resonance’s funds provide our clients. We were also able to share thoughts and practices on one of the key areas of concern for our tenants at the moment – the cost of living crisis.” 

Lara Norris, Senior Consultant, The Curiosity Society: “The forum provides such an amazing opportunity for highly experienced and skilled people to come together and not only look at the trends over the last year but to look forward and help plan and prepare for the future.

“The ambition and enthusiasm in the room was infectious and driven by an underlying mission in all the housing partners - to really make a difference to their tenants' lives. To make people's homes not only a stable foundation from which to grow, but a springboard to jump start that growth. It was a real privilege to be there, and we look forward to seeing the full potential of this united team unleashed.” 

Housing Partner Resource Hub

The first Housing Partner Forum was a great opportunity for Resonance to also consult on the development of our new Housing Partner Resource Hub. This online tool is being developed for housing partners across our seven property funds to share ideas and initiatives around supporting their tenants, especially around the cost of living crisis, but also covering other topics, sharing contacts and other initiatives and companies they use as well as wider industry insights

We create and manages scalable and diversified residential property funds that provide life changing housing solutions for people facing housing crisis. Since 2013 our funds have raised in excess of £340 million, providing over 1,000 safe and affordable homes for around 3,000 people across the UK.