T: Tenant Wellbeing

How the relationship between tenants and social landlords has been negatively affected and how Occupi can help to alleviate these issues.

The fifth and final of Occupi’s five values is Tenant Wellbeing. Anyone who has worked alongside social housing tenants for a number of years will understand there can sometimes be tensions between tenants and social landlords. You’ll probably also be aware that the tensions between tenants and income teams, in particular, has been getting worse for the last few years.

Certainly, some of these tensions are a result of the high-profile national news stories over the last few years that concern issues in social housing, which have rightfully brought attention to areas within the sector that require improvement. However, a second cause of these tensions is the way income and inclusion teams organise tenancy support and contact tenants.

Tenants often feel ignored by financial inclusion teams, or conversely they feel over-contacted by income teams when their arrears are being managed. Some tenants in technical arrears - where arrears only accrue due to a mistiming between a tenant’s rent payment and their salary/benefits payments, and are paid off shortly after - are contacted every month, whereas tenants that truly require support slip through the cracks.

The cause of this is the large, unmanageable and cluttered caseloads that income and inclusion teams are forced to use. Due to the influx of new social housing tenants over the last 5 years and outdated management systems, teams have to work through massive caseloads that are impossible to complete. These caseloads include many non-action cases and aren’t optimised to prioritise the tenants most in need. As such, some tenants are contacted erroneously or too often, while others that need help are ignored.

However, there is a solution. Occupi’s AI analyses and organises tenant data so that income and inclusion teams can quickly and easily identify which tenants require support. The AI software will provide income teams with optimised caseloads to help them understand who’s debt is already being managed, which tenants have unstable arrears and need to be contacted, and which cases are simply technical arrears and require no action. For financial inclusion teams, Occupi will highlight which tenants need reviews or would benefit most from support packages. Occupi analyses tenancy data instantly and is never wrong, meaning that your tenants can be sure they receive support as and when required.