By Natalie Tate – Talking about Homes project lead
We know that people broadly support the need for building more social homes, yet we face challenges when we talk about actually delivering this in our local communities.
Having the right communications strategies – or ways of framing – at your fingertips is essential to getting our conversations on homes spot on. We need to be able to talk about decent and affordable homes in a way that builds consensus with the public. I spoke about this with the LGcomms group in September.
Effective framing means we diminish fatalism, build understanding and activate a ‘can-do’ attitudes. By using proven strategies to tell compelling stories, we can help people to see that change is possible and worth getting behind.
Our Talking about Homes top tips are:
- Talk about homes – not housing – as much as possible. Home evokes the idea of warmth, comfort and a place we’d want to be.
- Connect our homes with our health and wellbeing to build understanding of why access to decent and affordable homes matters.
- Describe decent, affordable homes as the ‘foundation’ of our lives.
- Speak collectively: this is about all of us and we all need to play our part.
By framing our stories well, and doing this often and consistently, we can shift the narrative on homes and build support for more decent and affordable homes.
The Nationwide Foundation and Joseph Rowntree Foundation have worked in partnership with FrameWorks UK to research and share proven ways to frame communications about homes. We want to enable anyone with a passion for improving our housing system to play their part in changing the narrative and building deeper public support for solutions.
Resource: Building consensus for building homes
Natalie Tate is the Strategic Communications Manager at Joseph Rowntree Foundation, leading on the Talking about Homes project.
View the resources here (members only)