J49 is a social housing provider with large ambitions. While responding to the need for affordable housing in London, it’s striving to create an environment of what it calls ‘creative community living’. Spaciable’s CEO and founder, David Graydon, visited J49’s Deptford Hub scheme, where Spaciable Living has been rolled out to tenants.
Simon Thomas, CEO, J49, said, “‘Creative living’ isn’t J49’s creativity, it’s the creativity of individuals. This is about re-empowering people’s lives – that’s what social housing should be. Generally, social housing in this country is about people getting more disempowered. We’re trying to switch it around and re-empower their lives.
“J49’s creation stems from a desire to transform the spaces that people find themselves in, such as really pressurised situations and accommodations. Back in the 1990s, we did some work that involved people building their own houses out of disempowered situations.”
On the back of this experience, J49 aims to empower its residents with long-term tenancies in well-built and affordable homes. As part of its plan to help its residents, J49 is currently implementing the Spaciable Living app at its Deptford Hub development in Lewisham.
Community building
Discussions with J49’s tenants revealed a historic lack of trust within the community, the importance of security and the need to ensure a safe environment for residents.
Thomas said, “One of the things that we’re trying to do at J49 is to build a sense of community, which is why the Spaciable app is so important.
“Community in the urban space is absolutely vital if we want to change the way that people think about the spaces they live in and even the kind of jobs they can do. That’s why community is part of our plan; we use the app to get people on board and to create a community of communication rather than a community of suspicion.”
An essential element of community-building in the urban environment is reducing the sense of suspicion among neighbours.
Thomas said, “That’s a common aspect of people’s backgrounds here. They’re suspicious about their neighbours, typically resulting their previous experiences. We need to remove those barriers and reintegrate these tenants into the community again.”
Digitisation & building trust
Before residents meet each other at the Deptford Hub development, they are already using Spaciable Living to digitally interact and get to know one another, using our app’s chat and neighbourhood updates features.
Thomas said, “One of the things that is really interesting is that a couple of residents have already said, ‘I have my own app and this feels like the most empowered thing in my life.’ Getting them from that place of disempowerment to then communicating with the outside community will revolutionise many of the things they’re doing.”
It’s an interesting perspective, and one that many of us overlook or take for granted. Technology, especially social media, is sometimes criticised for its divisive qualities so it’s refreshing to hear how inclusive and welcoming it can be. The personalisation of our app takes this a step further because it demonstrates each tenant’s value to the community.
Preventing isolation
Thomas said, “Our number-one vision is community rather than isolation. The city is all about isolation, separation and a disconnection from our ability to run our own lives, so we’d like to see a ‘social transformation’ at our Deptford Hub the development.
“One of the greatest things about the UK is that it’s a completely multicultural society. That should be the most fantastic thing but what it’s caused over the last 15-20 years is a disconnection. J49 therefore wants to create a different culture, reintegrating the community aspect to city life.”
An environment of purposeful living
When joining J49, new residents are asked, “What do you think you could add to this community?”
Thomas said, “This is a shocking question for many people. If you’ve been disempowered for so long, you don’t think in that way so that question leads to a kind of deep searching.
“Residents mentioned things such as art, music and food, so we then asked them how those things could work in the community and what they would need to bring those into community life.
“Going back to the digital vs. human, this is where we need to interact with that kind of information and get people thinking. They can find groups in the Spaciable app, make connections and start chats. It must be part of the future.”
Simon Thomas is the CEO of J49, and David Graydon is the CEO and founder of Spaciable.
