Together with the support from Mayor’s Fund for London, MTVH, and Partnership for Young London, Cindy and Ruman delivered workshops on youth voice in housing at the London Housing Summit in June 2024 (organised by the Centre for London).
Professionals from the housing sector (working in development, policy, architecture, regeneration, etc.) came to learn about the findings and recommendations from the peer research project ‘the Gap – youth voice in housing associations’, realising the need for including the voices and needs of young residents and young people more broadly.
In the second workshop ‘Seeking Solutions’, we asked everyone to discuss in groups how they could build on our work within their role/organisation and how they could help bringing young people’s voices into policy and planning.
Some examples offered by participants:
Recognising the diversity of young people with different needs and different lived experiences (and act accordingly)
Highlighting the need to hear voices of underrepresented young people, especially need to hear from young people in temporary accommodation and who are experiencing homelessness
Recognising that young people are asking for specific and tangible actions to be taken (staying away from vague language)
Need for co-production with young people, creating genuine pathways to influence and make decisions
Involving young people in the early stages of planning and design (not just evaluation or review)
Also, these were some of the questions from the audience:
“How do you get young people engaged? I don’t know where to start!”
think about it as a stakeholder and invest your time and energy just the same way how you would like to get any other stakeholder engaged: find out what is important to them, be curious and look for things in common.
“Yes, youth voice is important, because young people are the future”
Yes, but they are also the present!
“As a developer, it was probably just a lack of education when we spoke to young people resisting the plans and why it is important to develop the neighbourhood.”
Young people definitely need more housing education while at the same time, that resistance can come from holding very different beliefs or hidden effects to their community and should be explored and engaged with before assuming it is a lack of education.
Please find the full summary of proposed solutions and strategies here:
Workshop participants included colleagues from:
Berkeley Homes, L&Q, Hyde Housing, Dolphin Living, New Horizon Youth Centre, Shelter, Community Plan for Holloway, David Chipperfield Architects, Fletcher Priest Architects, the borough of Croydon, Richmond upon Thames, Lambeth, Haringey, Brent and Southwark, London Councils, OPDC, PRD, Cratus Group and the Greater London Authority.
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