Fair Housing Futures

Funding at a glance

Programme: Transforming the Private Rented Sector
Amount: £636,604
Approved: 2017
Timescale: 6 years
Status: Funding in progress
Phase: Decent Affordable Homes Phase Three

A place-based collaborative programme to innovate and improve services and interventions in Greater Manchester’s private rented sector, finding system-wide solutions to transform renting for vulnerable tenants.


Strategic purpose

To give tenants a stronger voice in debates about housing and the private rented sector.

To build more robust evidence of the solutions to address the issues of cost, quality, security, and access in the private rented sector and ensure this evidence is available and used to inform policy and practice.

Project description

The private rented sector needs to undergo significant reform before private tenants can feel truly happy and settled in their homes. Landlords and tenants both play a central role in the private rented sector, but tenants’ experiences are often overlooked. Working collaboratively with many stakeholders, Fair Housing Futures is finding system-wide solutions to transform private renting for vulnerable tenants in Greater Manchester

The project is run by Shelter Greater Manchester, one of the national housing and homelessness charity’s regional chapters.

Central to Fair Housing Future’s approach is its focus on collaborative working. It’s bringing together a wide range of stakeholders to find ways to improve the private rented sector’s delivery of decent and affordable housing. The project will also maximise the opportunities afforded by the metro mayoral political system for influencing local and, in time, national changes to policy and practice.

Fair Housing Futures tested a range of projects from 2020 through to 2023 – including a tenant champion in Wigan, a support officer in Salford, and a bond board to prevent homelessness by engaging with landlords and letting agents – to generate ideas for finding out what worked in Greater Manchester that could be applied elsewhere.

Each project was successful in its own way, but the scheme also learnt a lot about tailoring projects to fit a local context and targeting groups with communications specific to their needs and interests.

Looking ahead, Fair Housing Futures will use what it’s learnt to try to engage with local power-holders and ultimately inform policy and practice. It would be grateful to hear from anyone working in the area interested in what it’s doing.

Back to funding 2016–present