Marking 60 years of helping homeless people in Luton

In Luton in the 1950s two groups, one Protestant and one Catholic, were concerned about a national problem – homelessness, the condition of housing for poorer people and rogue landlords.

They were concerned that the quality of housing for working people affected life opportunities, social mobility and health/life expectancy. These two informal groups both registered themselves as housing associations in 1962 – so this year, we are 60 years old!

Getting started

Both groups worked individually to raise money to buy properties. In those days they employed no staff and fundraised for deposits, obtaining loans and mortgages to buy properties. Voluntary members interviewed tenants, collected rents and organised repairs. Then in 1971, they pooled resources and created Luton Churches Housing(LCH).

The following year, the Conservative government passed a fairly controversial housing act, which enabled non-government organisations to develop housing using government grant funding via the Housing Association Grant (HAG). Part of the purpose was the regeneration of inner city/town areas, by renovating or replacing existing properties and bringing them up to a decent standard, rather than creating new housing estates.

By 1978, LCH had managed to acquire about 50 properties, some flats and houses. Over the next 10 years, the stock increased to around 200 mostly renovated properties. An office was needed, initially in Cardiff Road and then Upper George Street, and as the work increased – together with the legislative complexities – the voluntary board continued to make the decisions but sub-contracted day-to-day work to another housing association.

In 1986, LCH appointed a Chief Executive as its first paid staff member and employed two other staff – a housing officer and part-time receptionist and eventually a small inhouse maintenance team. By the late 1990s LCH had grown to around 350 homes, with offices in Wellington Street.

We worked with a number of local charities – Signposts, Mary Seacole and West Hill Housing Trust – to provide hostel accommodation. LCH owned the property and the other organisations, acting as agents, provided support to the residents. Then in 2000, the Chairperson of West Hill Housing Trust, Cllr Hazel Simmons, asked if we would manage their properties as well as the one they managed on our behalf. It was the start of LCH providing accommodation-based support directly to customers – and as a result, as well as providing around 400 family homes, we are now the largest local provider of accommodation for single people.

Enabling our residents to thrive

Our name changed to Luton Community Housing in 2003, and we more recently adopted the trading name of Squared – as in the mathematical term meaning a multiple of itself, reflecting that we do much more than simply provide housing. Our entire ethos is about enabling our customers to thrive in all aspects of their lives.

We currently manage a stock of around 800 properties and employ about 70 staff, depending on funding and specific contracts. We also work in partnership with Luton Borough Council on a scheme to help homeless families into homes leased from the private sector.

Offering gardening, HR and financial services

In recent years, we have diversified our activities: as well as our social rental income, we have commercial rental income from office space, offer cleaning and gardening services, HR and financial services to other organisations and individuals. These activities enable us to offer work opportunities to customers. We also support trainee social workers by offering work placements.

We are proud to offer our Purposeful Employment Service to help people into work. While work is essential to have money for things beyond basic living, it is also essential to build and support self-esteem and a sense of contribution to society that we consider is a basic human need.

More than that, we believe everyone should have an opportunity to enjoy their work and we support individuals to identify work they will enjoy and then help them obtain training and, where needed, funding.

We are conscious that employment of the future will be very different to the past and self-employment is as much an option as working for someone else.

Driving Alan Sugar

One great example where we helped someone into a job they enjoy is a customer who wanted to drive limousines. We helped him to pass his driving test, obtain his licence as a limo-driver and then get employment. He sent us a text to say that one of his first jobs was driving Alan Sugar – who was in the back of his limousine!

Other examples are people who have gone on to work in the music industry, childcare and running their own gardening businesses and one even went off to Greece to do maintenance work on Greek Tavernas!

Looking to the future

Squared has long encouraged our staff to work flexibly. With Covid, that has become much more of a norm and we are aware that our customers often don’t have the luxury of working from home, even if the job allowed, as there is insufficient space or peace and quiet. So we are working on ways to enable our customers to be able to work from shared spaces, such as desks in our offices, and in the future we hope to build these opportunities into new developments.

Sixty years on and although the housing landscape has changed significantly, poor quality housing and bad landlords are still an issue. The basic human needs haven’t changed. Everyone needs a secure home; to establish stability then use as a springboard for progression. After that we all need opportunities to create the life we want to live.

There’s lots for us still to do and thanks to the great team we have at Squared, we are ready for it!

Get in touch

We need new voluntary board members for the future, as well as new partners to offer even more work and learning opportunities for our customers.

If you can help or would like more information see https://www.squared.org.uk/