Social Innovation in Housing: Learning from practice across Europe
Introduction:
This paper presents and discusses the results of a brief scoping study on social innovation in housing in Europe. The research was carried out by Darinka Czischke (Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands) following her being awarded the David Butler grant by the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) and the Ocean Media Group.
The aim of this paper is to help housing practitioners to understand the main issues and benefits of applying social innovation in housing. The report presents a brief reflection on the application of social innovation in the housing context, followed by practical examples of socially innovative approaches to the delivery of housing services across Europe.
Social innovation: process and outcomes:
In terms of outcomes, three approaches 5 to social innovation can be distinguished, each centering on a different level of the social problems it seeks to address: i. Social needs of vulnerable groups that are currently unmet (e.g. homelessness and/or different forms of housing exclusion) ii. Challenges of society as a whole (e.g. climate change, unemployment, etc.) iii. Systemic reforms of societal configurations, which lead to an increase in overall wellbeing (e.g. public policy reforms that mainstream new types of social relationships).
Why is social innovation important?
The quest for social innovation and its growing popularity arises from the generalized recognition that traditional ways of meeting new and pressing needs are often inadequate. In this context, neither States nor markets nor civil society organisations are seen as able to meet these challenges on their own. The huge impact of recent structural, social, economic and environmental problems such as the global economic crisis, decades of growing unemployment, climate change, major socio-demographic changes (e.g. ageing, international migration, persistent poverty, precarious employment, etc.) mean that new responses are required to face these diverse and complex challenges. In the field of housing, these challenges call for innovative ways of providing, managing and governing housing.
How does social innovation apply to the field of housing?
Despite the wide variety of fields to which the concept of social innovation has been applied so far, housing does not feature amongst these. Only the field of homelessness has received some attention in the public debate on social innovation 7 . The extent to which social innovation is applied to the provision, management and governance of different forms of housing has not been examined to date. To help fill this knowledge gap, we conducted interviews with key informants from the field of housing across a number of European countries to draw on their perceptions of what could be considered ‘socially innovative’ in housing.
So is there anything specific about social innovation in housing?
The very nature of housing with its intertwined physical and social aspects means that new types of social problems require approaches that bring together technical, social and even other kinds of innovations. There is recognition, however, that not all innovation in this field necessarily comes from housing organizations: there are products created in the market that can be applied to housing.
New ways to help vulnerable groups through housing:
Conventional approaches to tackling the many faces of housing exclusion have become increasingly inadequate over the last decades. This holds true especially since the effects of the economic crisis started to become more and more acute. Housing exclusion is not only affecting low-income groups of people any longer; even middle-income households are facing the prospect or the reality of eviction and of being in housing need. Hence, many housing providers have begun to devise new solutions to help a wide range of households to deal with these situations.
Conclusion:
Social innovation is a common feature in many of these initiatives, including aspects of self organization, building of social capital/social cohesion, affordability and often even higher environmental standards. These initiatives represent innovative solutions in the face of a lack of suitable alternatives and / or resources. From a process perspective, many housing actors tend to apply collaborative approaches to management and governance through working with residents and stakeholders to deliver better social services.
The latter include residents’ empowerment as a more or less explicit element, depending on the particular cases. Areas where social innovation featured repeatedly were: addressing demographic change (the elderly, inter-generational living, etc.) and social exclusion and vulnerable groups; means of systematizing social investment in local communities; and ways to improve cross-sector collaboration and coordination.
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