Thinking about housing? ThinkHouse
In the flood of information about housing, how do you know what is important? Gemma Duggan introduces a new website that aims to help.
When it comes to figuring out how to pick out the most relevant and interesting items of housing policy, in a digital world awash with more data than I can possibly process, we need help.
The same forces feeding the digital flood – companies like Facebook and Google – are racing to create more effective algorithms for showing us what we need, but the reality is that we still need smart, well-informed people to help us out.
Just consider some of the challenges we face.
The digital flood
Research is easier, cheaper and faster to create, thanks to social media and digital publication, which generates fantastic debates and makes housing research and evidence more accessible. But the volume can be overwhelming, and the best bits –like a sane voice in a noisy crowd – can get lost.
It is increasingly tricky to identify the pieces with gravitas and real value, especially when you’re looking at a marketing or lobbying report and trying to work out whether being a lobbying report or marketing exercise detracts from its value.
Reports no longer stack up on your desk – or the desk of a more junior member of staff – waiting to be read. The cost of printing is no longer the helpful filter it once was, serving to weed out some of the less worthy material. Instead, hundreds of housing reports, articles and comment pieces drift about the internet; they may be liked or retweeted but never even read.
The consequences
As someone who looks at a lot of this type of research, I have seen a number of themes emerge as a result of this flood of information.
- The amount of attention a piece of research gets is not necessarily reflective of its relevance or quality. Several recent pieces garnered lots of attention and made headlines because the research was novel, not because it was good quality.
- There isn’t enough funding of research for research’s sake: it has to have a business case attached or make a point. This means some of the big issues relating to the housing crisis have only attracted a relatively flimsy evidence base. For example, there a growing need for comparative reports between the four national housing policies. Wales and Scotland are moving away from English policy, while Northern Ireland mainly stands still. There is some evidence emerging that this divergence is starting to affect the housing prospects of people in those four nations in different ways. This is a unique chance to evaluate what works.
- There is more thought about reputation than there is about co-ordination. The UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE) should make great strides in overcoming this, but at the same time its creation was announced around five different projects on the ‘future of social housing’ have been launched.
The curation solution
So, what is needed is curation: the ability and willingness of respected experts to sift and present the most useful material for you. This is just like a museum curator digging through an enormous collection to ensure the most relevant artefact is identified for a timely exhibit.
Fortunately, we do indeed have a place where some of the best and most interesting policy is being gathered.
ThinkHouse.org.uk was set up last year as a place for anyone who is interested in housing and wants to read something which will make them think, from the most innovative research pieces to policy publications and case studies.
It is a shiny new place for great housing research to get the recognition it deserves. You will find work which proposes ways to increase the amount and quality of the UK’s housing stock, and you will find research on the related economic, social and community benefits of doing this.
Help for policy makers, journalists and speech writers
For policy makers, ThinkHouse aims to provide easy access to a few key reports and provide a home for all relevant work. This will help inform those engaged in understanding how we can build more and better homes and communities, improve knowledge transfer and provide the evidence and ideas necessary to drive good decision making.
To help speech writers and journalists, each annual section will include some interesting ‘bite size’ facts on reports published in the year.
And, because not all research is created equal, it is rated and reviewed by an editorial panel of housing association chief executives, housing academics, key sector leaders and me. The editorial panel members, who volunteer their time, write a short review of those reports judged worthy.
I highly recommend you engage with and visit the site. If you have research you would like to submit for consideration and review please email info@thinkhouse.org.uk.
