Elaine Bowes: The Evolution of Black and Minority Ethnic Housing Associations

Author Elaine Bowes has kindly given Elim Housing permission to share an extract from her book ‘The evolution of Black and minority ethnic housing associations’. In which she explores the roots of Black and Ethnic Minority Housing Associations in the UK and their lasting impact for communities.

“In this society, Black people have to think and act with consciousness and lift themselves. I wanted to win every opportunity for Black people to have experience of decision-making and power in this society… to take our place equally alongside others at the top table. Black and minority ethnic housing associations gave Black people that opportunity.’’ – Wilfred Wood in interview with the author, 2003

In many minority communities, perhaps the most resilient and widespread community organisations have been religious bodies – churches, mosques, synagogues, temples and gurdwaras. Some communities define their ethnicity by their religion, and therefore religion plays a vitally important role in the respective communities of Hindus, Orthodox Jews and Sikhs.

The organisation around these faiths, including regular meetings at designated places, provide not only spiritual succour but also welfare and other kinds of mutual support and assistance.

“It was never simply about being separatist… but about empowerment and independence… it was important for the community to have a resource that they could call their own… to be able to provide for themselves”
In the Caribbean community, the Black-led churches have provided spiritual as well as material support for their members, families and the wider Caribbean community. Unlike other communities, however, the Black-led churches have in the main refrained from active participation in, or even general comment on political matters.
Other than the faith groups, perhaps the most successful and enduring example of organisation around particular needs are Black and minority ethnic housing associations.

Some of these housing associations originated from political mobilisation and indeed one or two, such as Ujima in London and Handsworth Single Homeless in Birmingham (before their demise) and Odu Dua In London, began by aiming to meet a highly politicised need at the time (with respect to the link between criminality and homelessness) – alienated homeless Black youth.

Others organised around more hidden (in that they were less controversial) needs, which were chiefly cultural in nature, such as older people and large family housing. Many faith-based organisations also took on the housing needs of their communities as a major objective – Nehemiah Housing Association in Birmingham for example originated from the local Black-led Church of God of Prophecy.

The development of Black and minority ethnic housing associations is a landmark in the progress towards racial equality for housing associations. The earliest Black associations developed as a response to unmet needs in their communities, needs that had been ignored by the statutory agencies.

In the 1950s and early ‘60s, “immigrants were not welcome in the public sector or in the private rent market”, as Black Housing Magazine reported in 2001. It was not uncommon to see “no dogs, no Blacks, no Irish” signs in the windows of houses advertising rooms for let.

“Immigrants were not welcome in the public sector or in the private rent market”

The new arrivals, mainly from the Caribbean at that time, used their community networks to find accommodation and, because loans and mortgages were not readily available to them, they further developed their community finance and banking systems to provide funds to their members to purchase their homes. However, these properties were frequently in very poor condition and overcrowding was prevalent. These conditions were not dissimilar to those that were experienced by others who were renting privately.

Two early examples of Black-led associations were The Coloured People’s Housing Association and Trinity Housing Association, both of which operated fairly successfully until the 1974 Housing Associations Act introduced a policy of rationalisation by limiting housing association activity to particular areas or ‘zones’. Zoning effectively starved small associations (including those Black associations) of funds, forcing them to remain small or disappear altogether. Conversely, zoning worked to the benefit of the larger associations, who expand and became more powerful.
Some Black associations did not survive this new regime; the Coloured Peoples Housing Association merged into Metropolitan Housing Trust, and Trinity into East London Housing Association.

Other small and fledgling groups, including Black-led associations trying to start up and develop autonomously at this time were not encouraged to do so. They were persuaded instead to enter in to partnerships with larger established associations, which would control the technical, development aspects of housing, leaving the small association to manage the properties once they had been developed. Needless to say, such arrangements were unsatisfactory, and these associations were repeatedly denied the opportunity of developing independently of their ‘partners’. As a result, only one or two Black associations were able to start up and expand autonomously during this period – Ujima Housing Association was one of them.

Ujima Housing Association
Some of the founding members of the Black associations that developed in the late 1970s and early ‘80s were highly politicised individuals who had a history of involvement in community politics. This was a highly volatile period for Black people in Britain, and many activists were campaigning, protesting and organising to empower their communities.

Young Black men were being harassed by the police and the ‘Sus’ laws (which enabled the police to stop and search young men simply on suspicion that they had committed a crime) in particular, were unjustly criminalising them. When they came out of jail, they frequently had no jobs and no homes, as some of them had parents whose attitudes were pro-establishment, leading them to doubt that their sons had in fact suffered gross injustices. This simply exacerbated generational conflict.

Ujima developed initially to respond to the needs of these young men. The association originated out of the work of a Black voluntary organisation called Headstart, which was committed to community development, education and empowerment for black communities. Headstart opened Black bookshops, published newsletters and organised supplementary education for Black children.

Headstart had long identified housing as a serious issue for young Black people, and had a housing project called ‘Ujima’, a Swahili term meaning ‘working together’. In 1978, a small group of community workers took over its management from Headstart, and Ujima Housing Association was born.

Ujima began by providing housing advice from a drop-in centre in Harrow Road, west London. Its declared aims were “to create temporary and permanent housing provision for single persons and couples without children mainly of New Commonwealth origin who are homeless or in housing difficulties”. Tony Soares became the co-ordinator – later director – and with a team of voluntary workers, set about providing temporary accommodation through short-life housing and hostel accommodation.

Ujima grew to become one of the largest and most successful Black and minority ethnic housing associations in the country, with in excess of four thousand homes in its property portfolio. However, in 2008, Ujima fell into insolvency – reportedly the first housing association ever to do so – and its properties were taken over by L&Q.

Odu Dua
Odu Dua had similar origins to Ujima. In 1978, a group of Black women in Camden began to organise to respond to the discrimination and exclusion being faced by Black women and their families. Camden Black Sisters was a political campaigning organisation, and became well respected within and outside its community for its achievements.

In 1985, Camden Black Sisters established the Camden Black Parent and Teachers Association (CBPTA), where the late John Oke (who later became a founding member and Odu Dua’s first director) played an active role.

CBPTA was concerned about the rising number of African Caribbean children who were being categorised as ‘educationally subnormal’, and provided advice and support to their parents and schools. It soon became aware of the link that this had to Black single homelessness. These children would often leave school after being stigmatised, have no jobs and were at greater risk of being exposed to the ‘Sus’ operations of the police. Because their parents did not know how to cope with this situation, they would often end up homeless. So CBPTA turned its attentions to youth homelessness and attempted to establish a housing association to address what it considered to be a crisis.

Mr Oke was employed by Ujima, which at the time was letting short-life property to single Black homeless people, and providing training and subsequent employment in construction. This provided the blueprint for the CBPTA. The association met with Camden Council, which was supportive and provided a few short-life properties to renovate and let. However, the council was loath to provide any further support until CBPTA was able to provide evidence that there was a homelessness crisis amongst Black youth in Camden.

According to Mr Oke, the team had to carry out research to prove something that everybody knew was occurring. However, on the strength of this evidence, Camden provided the group with a small office in Marsden Street, the Greater London Council gave a grant of £6,000, and it entered into an arrangement with Paddington Churches Housing Association, which provided properties for it to manage. Odu Dua Housing Association came into existence and the battle for registration with the Housing Corporation began.

The corporation wanted Odu Dua to work through Ujima, as the regulator considered that Ujima was already providing for that type of need. However, with the support of the local authority and the advent of the corporation’s first Black housing association, Odu Dua achieved registration.

Manningham Housing Association
Manningham Housing Association evolved in the late 1980s from the Bangladeshi Youth Organisation (BYO) in Bradford. This was a highly politicised group, which had organised initially to campaign for justice for the ‘Bradford 12’.

The Bradford 12, as they came to be known, were 12 members of the United Black Youth League (UBYL), an anti-fascist and anti-racist self-defense organisation from Bradford, primarily made up of South Asian and Caribbean young people. In 1981, 12 of its members were “charged following allegations that they had manufactured explosives in anticipation of a large-scale attack by fascist groups”. They were acquitted in June 1982 when the court decided they had acted in self-defence.

According to Shaukat Ahmed, chair of the BYO and first chair of Manningham Housing Association: “The NF [fascist political party National Front] used to march down Manningham Lane chanting… we didn’t hide our face fighting the NF or the BNP.”

BYO’s campaign extended to addressing the “racist rantings” of Ray Honeyford, the headmaster of Drummond middle school who had published some articles deriding multiculturalism in schools.

The BYO soon turned its attentions to the pressing and obvious needs in its local community. Bangladeshi and Pakistani families in Bradford had extreme housing needs. They were living in small terraced houses – that were frequently in poor condition and lacking amenities – with large families. They identified one case where as many as 14 people shared a two-bedroom home, and this was not atypical. Pakistani and Bangladeshi families did not live in council accommodation – subsequent research commissioned by the BYO showed that they were hostile to the idea of council housing and fearful of racism and racial attacks. According to Anil Singh (founder member and Manningham’s second director), “our concerns were about family needs”.

“There was trust on the board, trust from the community, and (eventually) the politicians and statutory agencies trusted us”

At the time, Mr Ahmed was a young radical and “saw conspiracy in everything… I believed they wanted to break up our communities so we had to get good accommodation in the locality to keep our families together. I had housing problems myself at the time, I was living in overcrowded housing, but there was the politics and racism in council estates to overcome… it was bad… the worst ever”.

In 1985, the BYO received a grant of £1,500 from Bradford City Council and commissioned Mr Singh to conduct research into the housing needs of Bangladeshi and Pakistani families in Bradford. The research uncovered that Bangladeshi and Pakistani families still wanted to live together in large extended family arrangements. It uncovered evidence of gross overcrowding – 772 families were living in 102 terraced two and three-bedroom homes, and 89% of those surveyed were homeowners.

The results of the housing needs research was published in 1986, at the same time that the Housing Corporation announced its plans for the promotion and registration of Black-led housing organisations, and Manningham Housing Association was registered.

Mr Ahmed recalls a number of ingredients that enabled its success. “The community trusted us, if they hadn’t it would never have happened,” he recalls.

“They knew us and we knew all the people who we were housing. We were not partial and we convinced the community that we were fair. We built up a huge reputation for integrity. There was trust on the board, trust from the community, and (eventually) the politicians and statutory agencies trusted us.”

Sharing of book extract and views, with permission from Author Elaine Bowes. https://www.ebowesconsulting.co.uk/