Live, Work and Play: Creating Communities

This week we have a change-maker who's looking at how homes and technology meet and how new technology can be introduced into the property sector in general.

After a 40-year career in social housing Matthew Gardiner is expert in the business of social landlords. He has direct experience of building new homes, managing and maintaining large property portfolios and securing institutional investment into the sector for organisations based in London, Merseyside and Greater Manchester. As CEO at Trafford Housing Trust for 14 years, he grew the organisation from its roots within a single Borough to one operating at scale across much of the NW of England.

Matt and myself talked about how public sector housing authorities need to adopt low touch, no touch technology as well as out of sector thinking to help improve housing quality and how we can look at gamification and the reward of housing data capture to help provide cheaper smart housing solutions.  

Fanyu Lin is an award-winning entrepreneur and architect, passionate about impact investing. She is the CEO of Fluxus, a construction technology company and social enterprise committed to improving quality of life through delivering affordable, sustainable and smart homes.

In this episode, Fanyu and myself talked about the use of AI-driven technology platforms in affordable homes, the industrial revolution and the reduction of operational and maintenance costs through technology.

Really pleased to have Tom Chance as a guest on the podcast! He is the Chief Executive at the National CLT Network, a national charity supporting community-led housing.

He worked for seven years at the Greater London Authority, where he developed a considerable expertise in housing and planning policy, and a strong overview of economic, policing, transport, environment and public health policy in London.

In this episode, Tom and myself talked about setting up and running a community land trust to develop homes and other assets to meet local needs.

Recent guests of the Innovators in Affordable Housing Podcast are Peter and Kirsty from Timber Design Initiatives, a company who's raison d’être is to deliver Europe-wide approaches to education, innovation and demonstration of best practice in the use of wood in architecture, design and construction through applied research collaborations with academia and industry.

Peter is an architect and director of Timber Design Initiatives (TDI) Ltd. and the author of 'New Timber Architecture in Scotland’ and ‘The Modern Timber House in the UK: New Paradigms and Technologies'. He leads the company's Mass Timber Academy and its Build Back Rural initiative to help remote rural communities build their own affordable homes using locally manufactured dowel laminated timber panels. 

Kirsty is a recent graduate from Dundee's Architecture and Urban Planning Masters unit, focusing on the contemporary perception of community in collaboration with Perth & Kinross Council. She is now part of the team at Timber Design Initiatives Ltd, actively working on a project to help solve the rural housing crisis in Scotland.

In this episode Peter, Kirsty and myself talked about how timber design and construction contribute to the technological innovation within the property development industry. We have discussed the general misconceptions of using timber as well as its advantages and most especially its positive effects on the affordable housing sector.

Alan Marcus is the Chief Digital Strategy Officer at Planet Smart City, an innovative proptech company designing and building affordable smart projects with social and digital innovations to improve lives.

In this episode, Alan and Alex talked about creating community environments which are socially inclusive. Prioritising not the building of the "houses" but the building of communities and providing what the residents want in order for them to have good-quality living.

Matt Lesniak is a co-founder and Head of Impact & Innovation at Conscious Coliving, an impact-driven spatial and experience design consultancy for coliving developers, operators and investors. Matt is also a founding member and current Head of Community of Co-Liv, a co-founder of Coliving Insights and has worked for The Collective on their Impact and Community Experience Teams.  

In this episode, Matt and Alex talked about urban regeneration, communities and their holistic vision for coliving, one that regenerates spaces into fulfilling and purposeful needs.

Our first-ever live episode is now in our podcast library! This is an episode we did a couple of weeks back with Richard Lankshear who is the Head of Innovation and Graham Sibley, Senior Business Development Manager of NHBC.

In this episode Richard, Graham and Alex talked about all kinds of things ranging from Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) to modular design and build options and how they relate to the affordable housing sector especially as there is a rapidly growing interest among many housing builders/developers in this particular area.

Rob Stephenson, the founder of FormScore and InsideOut aims to help facilitate this change and work to help break the stigma around the discussion of mental health amongst social communities.

Through this podcast episode, Rob discussed ways to attain quality living. He raised awareness on being mentally well especially during this time of change due to the pandemic. Rob suggested having a social community and improving work-from-home setup by building a community barrier for work and home with the help of affordable and social housing.

Andy Redfearn and Rebecca Stockman are the directors of LivShare Housing and Consultancy. LivShare provides consultancy services to organisations that want to develop low-rent housing that makes use of sharing economies in a variety of ways.

In this episode, Andy & Rebecca spoke about the innovation of affordable shared living. They further talked about the different advantages and effects of co-living from public to private sectors. Lastly, Andy & Rebecca informed us about the need for shared living in this community.

Nat Kendall-Taylor serves as Chief Executive Officer at the FrameWorks Institute. He oversees the organisation’s pioneering and research-based approach to strategic communications. 

In this episode, Nathaniel shared how we can reframe social issues such as social housing. He used ‘pronoun analysis’ as an example to help reinforce stereotypes and stigmatisation. He emphasised that all choices have a fact and can be used as a strategy.

 “All the choices we make: language, images, verbs, pronoun are not adornment, not just concept but they are actually influence”-Nat

Emma is an award winning Housing Professional that has had a career in housing that spans over 20 years, she is currently the Executive Director of Operations at Peaks and Plains Housing Trust. Her housing career started with Northern Counties Housing Association. After moving through the ranks, Emma left to join Trafford Housing Trust as Service Lead on properties. She then moved to an ALMO at Six Town Housing, as a member of the Executive Team as Director of Assets on to Great Places Housing Group as Director of Assets.

Emma was named in the top 10 Property Disruptors in Insider magazine in 2019 and She won Woman of the Year at the 2018 Woman in Housing Awards.

In this special episode, let us join Pete Craig, the director of SARVA Education with a mission to cultivate the creative genius of children and young adults, interview Alex Impey - the founder of XUSA Properties and the author of Innovators in affordable housing podcast series.

XUSA Properties is an innovative company whose aim is to revolutionise the property market through game-changing advances in social & private sector housing. The company invests and develop both residential and mixed-use units, with the goal of supporting first-time buyers along with those in need of private and social rental living spaces.

Brian Taylor has been in business for over 50 years and has held senior positions in the fish processing industry, oil and gas training, construction and property development both in the UK and overseas.

For for the last 20 years, Brian has been the CEO of one of Scotland’s most successful & fastest growing charities. Somebody Cares provides help for thousands of families, pensioners and individuals every year and is believed to be the only organisation in Scotland that does everything for free!

Co-Founder at Castell Group, a Property Development company based in Wales, specialising in Delivering High Quality Affordable, Social and Disabled Housing.

Dorian has been actively involved within the Property Sector since he set up a lettings agency aged 16. Since then he has been involved in over 70 property acquisitions. Dorian has collaborated with a variety of private investors and lending institutions to make a bigger social impact, raising millions of pounds in investment with the sole purpose of developing high quality, affordable, social and disabled homes for those truly in need.

Rich Tinto is the self-styled “Vision Guy” at Tinto Architecture, Interiors and You. Establishing the practice with a view to revolutionising how architecture is delivered has evolved into revolutionising how we deliver true value through the built environment. Tinto’s Vision “To transform the world through place and space” provide a purpose to lean into the ever-evolving world of creating real value for end users of all types of building. The current climate and necessity to create game changing social impact in housing inspires Rich and he believes that the status quo is there to be challenged, evolved and improved.

Pieter Zitman, founder of Mix Developments, is an architect and award-winning project manager and housing developer. He has more than 33 years’ experience in the construction industry, designing and delivering residential, educational and healthcare projects. For the past 19 years he has specialised in the residential sector and for the past 12 years in affordable housing. Amongst other accolades, his developments have been presented with 2 RIBA awards, 3 Evening Standard awards, the RICS award and the Royal Fine Arts Commission Trust award.

Andrew is the CEO of HACT, an innovation agency which provides future-oriented solutions, projects and products for the UK social housing market. He joined HACT in 2003 and has worked in homelessness, supported housing and wider social exclusion policy and practice for 26 years.

Richard Kennedy is a creative thinker, leader and collaborator with a strong track record in developing effective cross organisational and cross sector partnerships. He is a Director and co-founder of Cornerstone Place, a company focused on delivering mixed use bespoke housing led solutions for charities and social enterprises serving people at risk of homelessness. Richard has a passion for using business strategies and models to create sustainable businesses focused on positive impact and social change.