Social Housing — 30 years of projects across South Yorkshire

Celebrating South Yorkshire Housing Association at 50: and only two Chief Executives in 50 years

South Yorkshire Housing Association is 50 this year.

How have we managed to stay true to our founder’s mission?

Part of the answer lies in the consistency of our leadership: we have had only two Chief Executives in our 50-year history, John Belcher and Tony Stacey. It is also because of the quality of those two leaders and their commitment to our purpose.

Tony has announced his imminent, and well-deserved, retirement after 27 years. This blog uses the refurbishment of a former homeless hostel to tell the story of Tony’s contribution to South Yorkshire Housing Association.

A new works depot for South Yorkshire Housing Association: what makes the design uniquely ours?

At South Yorkshire Housing Association we have brought our Home Maintenance Team and our Neighbourhood Estate Action Team together in a new, shared depot.

The result is a depot like no other. What makes the design of this depot and the rest of our workspace uniquely South Yorkshire Housing Association's?

Come Home: how South Yorkshire Housing Association’s brand communicates our purpose

At South Yorkshire Housing Association we are delighted to have been named Landlord of the Year in the UK Housing Awards.

Our video submission captures the strength and integrity of our brand: how our images, stories, evidence and tone of voice come together to articulate and communicate our values and purpose.

This blog tells the story of how we developed our brand.

Libraries by design: the power of a well-designed library

We know that libraries are transformational. What interests me is the difference that good design can make to elevate the transformational impact of libraries. Here are three examples:

#1 A library building - the Learning Zone in Parson Cross, Sheffield

#2 A curated library - at South Yorkshire Housing Association’s Rockingham Street workspace

#3 A Human Library - an event co-produced with South Yorkshire Housing Association’s customers and employees

Pictorial meadows: the perfect urban landscape for our time?

The pandemic has helped us all notice the joy in small everyday details, the flowers, the birdsong. Staying close to home, walking daily through local streets and green spaces, has helped us appreciate the natural world around us.

And at the same time, the massive overnight reduction in road and air traffic, the resulting improvement in air quality, the reduced noise and the fragility of our food chains, has focused our minds on the bigger picture of climate change and our relationship with the natural world.

Rockingham Street, Sheffield: Is the office now dead? 5 reasons why well-designed workspaces matter more than ever.

The UK officially entered lockdown on 23 March 2020, although by then many businesses had already encouraged their employees to work from home.

Overnight we have become a nation of homeworkers with a new set of acronyms (WFH anyone?), a new language and a new set of tools for working remotely.

Does this mean the office is dead? My gut instinct after even a week of home working was... no.

South Yorkshire Housing Association's new workspace: how to communicate your business purpose through design

The concept of a settled home is important to us at South Yorkshire Housing Association. Our purpose makes this clear: "with South Yorkshire Housing Association you can settle at home, live well and realise your potential; we want your experience with us to be a joy and we plan to be here for the long term".

Like Maslow we believe that until you are settled in a home that works for you, you cannot go on to enjoy your life, form meaningful connections with others and realise your personal potential.

So it's not surprising that in choosing and designing our new workspaces, both at Rockingham Street (our new "home") and at our smaller offices, we applied the same thinking.

Social Housing, BrandMiranda Plowden24 April 2020wellbeing, workspace, brand & purpose, design Comment

WikiHouse, Sheffield: could this be the solution to the UK’s housing crisis?

South Yorkshire Housing Association is the first housing association in the country (world?) to build a WikiHouse. Why did we do this?

The short answer is that in England we need to build more houses, better and faster, to hit the target of 300,000 new homes each year that is needed to tackle our housing crisis.

And we think WikiHouse could be part of the answer.

The longer answer is that while WikiHouse shares the benefits of other offsite construction methods - better/more airtight build quality, lower energy costs, higher environmental sustainability - it has some extra features which set it apart. These include: open source design, opportunities for citizen-led building, easy adaptation and distributed manufacture.

Slingsby Place: how can you make a 'place' with just 28 homes?

How can you make a "place" with just 28 homes? This is a recurring theme for South Yorkshire Housing Association whose 6,000 homes are dispersed across Sheffield City Region in groups of 10-100.