Coastal Housing Group: developing the Foundational Economy in South Wales.
| Author | Green, Debbi |
In the context of austerity and increasing in-work poverty, it is increasingly important for anchor institutions to contribute to building stronger economies and communities. Coastal Housing Group, as an important anchor and intermediary organisation in South Wales, has turned to the Foundational Economy approach in its work in Morriston, Swansea, to provide a framework to do this. In doing so, lessons can be learnt about rethinking economic interventions from the bottom up and, in turn, the implications this has for government policy and practice.
Coastal Housing Group is a not-for-profit community housing association formed in 2008 out of a merger of Swansea Housing Association and Dewi Sant Housing Association. Coastal has for the last five years been re-evaluating its social purpose in the light of significant external changes and challenges for local communities, and is now focused on sustaining tenancies, helping communities to become stronger and more connected, and helping to maintain and grow the local economy. We recognised that we played a key role in our local economy, but lacked a conceptual or practical framework to play this role more purposefully; working with the Foundational Economy Collective to apply the insights of the foundational approach gave us a framework to do so.
Our definition of the foundational economy contains two elements. The first is about collective consumption through the networks and branches which are the infrastructure of civilised everyday life. The foundational includes the material infrastructure of pipes and cables which connect households, as well as providential services like health and care which citizens rely on; outside the foundational, there is the closely linked mundane and overlooked economy of services such as haircuts and takeaways. The second element of the foundational economy includes universal basic services which are a citizen entitlement, and it therefore touches on political choices and policies as much as economics. From a foundational viewpoint, the distinctive role of public policy is not to boost private consumption by delivering economic growth, but to ensure the quantity and quality of foundational services, and by doing so create an economy which focuses on producing an environment that enables citizens to live 'lives worth living'.
Within Wales, Coastal Housing Group is a fairly typical community housing association; it is based in Swansea, Neath, Port Talbot, Bridgend and Carmarthenshire, and has nearly 6000 homes. The association is a not-for-profit Co-operative and Community Benefit Society with charitable rules, regulated by the Welsh Government. As well as being a major builder of new homes, Coastal has a track record in successfully developing complex mixed-use city and town centre housing-led regeneration schemes, for example Urban Village on Swansea High Street. This activity has contributed to Coastal's [pound sterling]20 million commercial property portfolio, and a partnership with the creative industries to bring back activity and footfall to the high street.
However, the environment in which Coastal and other housing associations are working is becoming increasingly hostile. Welfare reform and benefit cuts, the roll-out of universal credit, and austerity, which has resulted in the rollback of public and third sector services, are all making it harder for tenants to pay rent and sustain tenancies. Since the 1980s, 30,000 to 40,000 blue-collar jobs in industry and manufacturing have been lost to the region. Where they have been replaced, it has been by poor quality, insecure employment, for example, in Amazon, call centres, retail and the night-time economy. Our data tell us that, in our communities, people in financial distress are more likely to be working than out of work.
So what do housing associations do when social rents are becoming unaffordable, and when their success is inextricably linked with the social capital and economic opportunities existing in the communities where we build and rent homes?
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