Citizen Housing (formerly WM Housing) is a not-for-profit social housing business, housing approximately 66,000 people in 30,000 households. A high proportion of its tenants are in receipt of welfare benefits and are on low incomes – some are the most vulnerable in society. Yet legislation changes mean these tenants will become responsible for their own benefits – creating risks for sustainable tenancies.
We brought together diverse set of stakeholders and coded their insights into themes, which then allowed us to identify opportunities for effective targeted behaviour-change interventions.
We detailed a range of interventions to pilot to help communications. These interventions were based on the core insight that tenants live in scarcity – not just of money – but cognitive resources, too. That scarcity captures the mind and affects a person’s daily thoughts and feelings. Having too little of something – time, money, knowledge – creates a ‘tunnelling effect’ – which focuses all available cognitive resources on the most immediate pressures, at the expense of everything else.
This mindset means timing and message framing is critical and can mean tapping into a situation when the tenants motivation is greatest, or their capabilities and opportunities are high.
We identified a range of interventions and nudges – such as repositioning the letters they send to tenants – which are currently being piloted across housing communities for efficacy.