Help yourself

My career in housing started out unexpectedly in Birmingham in the mid-1970s. I’d been a social worker, toiling to change the world, but soon realised that for many of my clients housing was the real problem. And there was nothing I could do about it.

I stumbled upon a small project in Small Heath, Birmingham, called Shape. It took empty properties awaiting redevelopment from the city council and trained young people who had left care or were on probation to do them up. This was 1975 and, in the absence of any homelessness legislation, there was a queue of homeless families wanting to move in. Better a short-life house in central Birmingham than a flat somewhere far out in Northfields.