Sir Josiah Mason Trust is delighted to announce that it has signed up to the HouseProud Pledge, a scheme designed to ensure Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer (LGBTQ+) residents are able to enjoy their homes without fear of discrimination.

 

The HouseProud Pledge was developed by HouseProud (a network for LGBT+ people working in social housing) and the University of Surrey. By signing up to the Pledge, the Trust is committing to improve its services for LGBTQ+ residents and is expected to deliver on three core commitments within the first year.

 

The three commitments are:

Ensuring LGBTQ+ residents have an input at an executive/strategic level

Increasing LGBTQ+ visibility through the use of the Pledge symbol

Initiating a programme of staff training to improve understanding of LGBTQ+ lives.

 

The HouseProud Pledge follows the publication of the University of Surrey’s ‘No Place Like Home’ study, the largest of its kind in the UK, to understand the experiences, concerns and preferences of LGBTQ+ social housing residents. The study found a third of LGBTQ+ residents felt their neighbourhood was not a safe place to live and a third of survey respondents felt their landlord was not able to deal effectively with issues like harassment. Shockingly, a fifth of gay men reported that they regularly modify their home if visited by their housing officer or a repairs person to make their sexual orientation less visible (e.g. moving pictures, books and DVDs).

 

David Healey, Chief Executive said ‘We are very happy to be a pioneer of this excellent scheme that will help LGBTQ+ people feel more welcome and able have a greater say in how we operate as an organisation.  We know that many older LGBTQ+ people have experienced decades of discrimination and that making a decision to live at an  historic Almshouse organisation like ours can be daunting.  We are an inclusive forward thinking organisation that wants to better represent and reflect our community and the pledge will help us work towards achieving this aspiration.’

 

We look forward to sharing more information in the coming year about the work we will undertake to achieve the three commitments.