Social housing providers have come together to create a useful cost of living guide for tenants, which aims to raise awareness of effective energy and cost saving practices, as well as advice on managing household budgets.
‘Your Guide to Staying Warm on a Budget’ is a collaboration between 13 housing associations in the HACT NI Community Investment Network, Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Associations (NIFHA) and the Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE). The guide provides tips on how to keep energy usage and costs down, manage household bills, and reduce the damaging impact of damp & condensation.
The idea for a tenant guide came from discussions between housing officers, who noticed that more tenants were seeking advice on energy efficiency and making their income go further in the face of rising bills and household costs. The new booklet ensures that tenants have access to information on simple actions that can help them make essential savings during these difficult times.
Housing Officers and other support workers gathered key information, tips and tricks, and myth busters from organisations such as Age NI, the Consumer Council, Energy Saving Trust, Phoenix Natural Gas, Power NI and National Energy Action.
The 16-page guide is already being used by tenants, with more than 10,000 distributed so far, and housing associations will continue provide more copies for tenant over the coming months.
Speaking about the guide, Ruth Buchanan, Co-Chair of the HACT NI Community Investment Network, said “All housing providers know how difficult it is for tenants right now. The cost of living crisis has seen sharp rises in energy costs, food bills and other everyday expenses, and we see how many people are struggling to make their income stretch. Housing associations have been working hard to provide a range of support to tenants, including important financial steps such as benefit entitlement checks, as well as signposting to other support organisations, such as food banks.”
Tracey Ellis, Co-Chair said “There are a number of small things that we all can do to help make some savings, and these all add up over time. By producing this guide, we wanted to bring as much advice and information on how to do that together for tenants. It covers simple but effective tips such as keeping your home at a regular temperature, which is more efficient than intermittently putting the heating on, or turning lights off when not in use, which combined can help make some savings on your electricity bill. We all have something to learn from these.
“This comes on the back of the NIFHA Cost of Living Commitment which housing associations signed up to in autumn 2022, when we started to see tenants finding themselves struggling financially. Now, as then, we always encourage tenants to contact their social housing landlord if they are struggling, to see what support and advice is available.”
One Grove Community Housing tenant, Esther, said “I got a copy of this booklet from Grove Community Housing Association and found it very useful and informative and it is helping me make savings on a day-to -day basis.”
The HACT NI Community Investment Network is a group that has representation from organisations across the social housing sector including housing associations, Supporting Communities, NIHE and NIFHA. Participating housing associations were Rural Housing Association, Radius Housing, Grove Housing Association, Ark Housing, Apex, Clanmil, Choice Housing, Connswater, Habinteg, Woodvale & Shankill, Triangle and NB Housing.
The Network organises campaigns which address issues impacting social housing tenants across Northern Ireland, including the identification of community investment projects designed to advocate positive change for social housing tenants.
The guide can also be downloaded below this article or https://nifha.org/2023/02/22/staying-warm-guide-published/
