People in social housing have historically had a bad press – if any coverage at all. This is changing, says Neil Merrick
Tenants make the news
T
he reaction of residents at Grenfell Tower could not have been more
damning. “Where were you? Why didn’t you come here before?” they asked Jon Snow as he visited west London within hours of the tower block catching fire. During the coming months, the former Channel 4 News presenter was candid about the impression that visiting Grenfell in 2017 left on him as a broadcaster. Along with other journalists, he felt on the wrong side of a sociopolitical divide that meant the opinions of council tenants rarely made headlines. Six years since the fire that killed 72 people, and with the final report of the Grenfell inquiry still awaited, has the attitude of the media towards social housing changed? More than four million UK households live in homes let by housing associations or councils, although you wouldn’t know it from visiting a typical newsroom. “The vast majority of journalists
don’t live in social housing and most never have,” says Daniel Hewitt, investigations correspondent at ITV. During the past two years, Hewitt
has done more than most to keep social housing in the news, exposing the squalid conditions in which some tenants live, including severe cases of damp and mould.
12 | theJournalist
When he first came across poor conditions in a council flat in Croydon, he was forced to explain to colleagues in the newsroom why the story was of significance beyond south London. “I showed them the footage,” he recalls. “It was so horrific that it was enough to put it on the national news.” Hewitt’s stories coincided with
the championing of tenants by social media activist Kwayo Tweneboa, who became a thorn in the side of social landlords, including the housing association that let a flat to his family. Last year, such stories found extra resonance when a coroner ruled that a two-year-old boy, Awaab Ishak, had died in a Rochdale flat due to damp and mould. Suddenly, national and local reporters were interested in the issue, flagging up conditions in some of the worst social housing. According to Hewitt, the roots of the story lie in local journalism and, in some cases, were being reported prior to his exposés on ITV. “They had been seen as uber-local issues,” he says. “Nobody had put the jigsaw together.” Coming so soon after Grenfell, these stories only served to demonstrate the ‘culture of disparagement’ shown to tenants by some landlords, says Robert Booth, social affairs correspondent at The Guardian. Booth covered the Grenfell inquiry throughout its four years.
Though coverage varied from month to month, the appetite of Guardian readers for Grenfell- related news remained strong right up to the inquiry’s conclusion last November, he says. By then, however, the media lens
had already broadened to general fire safety in high-rise flats. This meant reporting on the plight of leaseholders, who were (and still are) being asked to pay hefty bills by building owners to improve safety. Here, parts of the media felt on safer ground as they were, in effect, championing homeowners, even if the people affected own only the lease to their property. At the same time, the Rochdale case means attention is still focused on tenants. More journalists are asking questions about how social housing is funded and where blame lies for poor-quality homes. “It’s not just about bashing landlords,” adds Booth. “One of the dynamics of the social housing story is that tenants are rising up and advocating change.” Previously, tenants were best known to the wider public for appearing in prime-time TV documentaries such as Benefits Street, numerous programmes about bailiffs
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28
