Broadland Housing tenants Richard and Mo have inspired a unique guide for media workers.
Fair Press for Tenants seeks to challenge media bias. It describes the impact of poor reporting and provides an alternative way to cover stories about social housing.
To compile the guide, journalists from the NUJ (National Union of Journalists) surveyed and interviewed people who live in social housing across the UK, including two of our tenants.
The Fair Press for Tenants guide is aimed at journalists, PR professionals, documentary makers and any media workers keen to hear the views of their readers, viewers and listeners on media representation of life in social housing. It is informed entirely by the ideas and words of people living in social housing.
Richard Peacock, Chief Executive of Soha Housing said: “The kind of stigma we commonly see attached to living in social housing is more than unfair. It’s damaging. Many tenants have told me of their frustration at the lazy stereotypes shown in newspaper images, stories and on TV reporting. My concern is that this negativity only leads to sidelining of tenants’ views and I think that this is ultimately dangerous for the balanced society we surely all want. Respect for people in our diverse society seems more crucial now than ever. A failure to have this can lead to unfair and unjust policy making and allocation of resources.”
Benefit to society
The guide is part of a wider Benefit to Society initiative. This acknowledges common misrepresentations of social housing tenants in the local and national media, such as tenants being associated with exploiting the benefit system and living in run down estates. These misrepresentations reinforce negative stereotypical views of social housing tenants among the public.
Benefit to Society also hopes to challenge those responsible for pushing the negative stereotypes, including government, the public and housing organisations themselves. See www.benefittosociety.co.uk for more information.
Leslie Channon, a tenant representative on the project steering group and a Director of Tpas said, “I’m proud to be part of something that is challenging the negative way we tenants are viewed all too often in the media. We’re just normal people, living our lives and we deserve the same respect as everyone else”.
‘Lazy stereotypes’
NUJ activist Rachel Broady, Equality Officer at Manchester and Salford Branch, worked with a group of social housing tenants to decide the content and wording of the guide. Rachel, who is a social housing tenant herself, said: “The tenants I worked with agreed that lazy stereotypes of nuisance neighbours need to be confronted and the clichéd photos of grim streets need to be reconsidered.
“Stereotyping social housing tenants has real consequences; it denies us a voice and allows our concerns to be dismissed because it too often portrays us as nuisances, as demanding something we’re not entitled to. I think this is particularly apparent after the Grenfell Tower atrocity where, combined with a lack of local reporting, the legitimate concerns of tenants were too easily ignored.”
The guide was launched on 14 September 2017 at the University of Salford, Media City UK. Watch the launch video.
Broadland support
Broadland is one of 17 housing organisations who sponsor Benefit to Society:
- Aspire Housing
- Bolton at Home
- Broadland Housing Association
- Homes in Sedgemoor
- Optivo
- Progress Housing Group
- Red Kite Community Housing
- The Riverside Group
- Rochdale Boroughwide Housing
- Soha Housing
- South Yorkshire Housing Association
- Town & Country Housing Group
- Wythenshawe Community Housing Group
- Tpas
- ARCH
- NFA
- NFTMO
For more information and photographs contact: Catherine Little, Soha Housing, 01235 515900 clittle@soha.co.uk
The annual SHIFT awards, organised by 
Bevan Jones, Managing Director of Sustainable Homes, said of this year’s SHIFT Awards finalists: “We are extremely pleased with the calibre and range of the entries this year. The judges have an incredibly tough job to select the winners. It’s great to see that sustainability still has a central place in the sector and beyond, and all the finalists should be proud of their achievements.”
We’re hosting a day of