Empowering Residents

There is a certain beauty in the housing sector of everyone beating their own path to more homes and resident satisfaction. From Community Gateway models and Co-ops to mega national landlords we have thousands of flowers blossoming. But this colourful variety can lead to strange outcomes.

Let’s take a multi-landlord estate or even a multi-landlord block of flats. Each resident will need to raise a repair to their own landlord (or perhaps to a managing agent). Each landlord has their own process, phone number, website or app. Residents will receive various levels of care and service, even if what they want and need is identical.

If Carol in flat 3 and Carl in flat 7 both report a dangerous trip hazard to their respective landlords, there will be two tickets, two repairs, and a lost service charge recovery along the way.

One aim with the ODX Open Data Exchange is that residents will be able to rapidly bring problems to the landlords attention. Based on common standards the ODX will record this information in a completely consistent way. This will make it easier for Carol and Carl to work together and for the landlords to address the issues straightaway, proactively. The report coming in will be like when local residents report faults to their local council or alert charities to cases of people sleeping rough. Of course, it will be necessary for the landlord to respond to residents, but if it’s public, the chances are that they will.

The ODX starts with the residents’ needs, which is critically important to us. If you are a resident in social housing or represent any groups of residents, please get in touch to help us get it right. Please join our mailing list for more details.