Most housing organisations know when a tenant falls into arrears. Far fewer have a clear picture of what was already happening in that tenant's life before the arrears appeared — the unresolved repair, the health condition, the household income that had quietly shifted. And it is in that gap, between what the data shows and what is actually happening, that tenancy sustainment most often fails.
In this episode of the Social Housing Round Table, part of the Policy and Governance stream, Matt Baird is joined by Josh Mallender of Netcall for a practical and wide-ranging conversation about what modern tenancy support actually looks like, and what it would take to move the sector from a reactive, siloed model to something more holistic, preventative, and joined up.
Josh draws on over a decade of experience working in and around social housing to explore why arrears are visible and easy to measure but rarely tell the whole story. A tenant who falls behind on rent might also be experiencing fuel poverty, an unresolved repair, or a health change that has affected their ability to work. A tenant who is quietly struggling but still paying their rent may not appear in any report at all. As Josh puts it, the silent sufferers remain invisible in standard workflows.
The conversation covers what a full tenant picture actually looks like when income, repairs, complaints, and housing management data are genuinely connected rather than siloed. It explores the technology choices that have left many organisations stuck with a patchwork of point solutions that do not talk to each other, the whack-a-mole problem of buying a new system for every new problem. And it asks the question that ran through the whole session: is technology the answer, or do organisations need to sort out their processes and their culture first?
The open discussion that followed was equally valuable, with contributions from housing professionals at different stages of this journey, and an honest acknowledgement that the gap between what the sector knows it should be doing and what it is actually doing in practice remains wider than anyone is comfortable admitting.
Big thank you to Alertacall Ltd for sponsoring The Social Housing Round Table, without them, none of this would be possible.
