Rural Housing Week 2022

Rural Housing Week is an annual campaign to showcase the fantastic work that housing associations do in rural communities.

Highlights from 2022

During Rural Housing Week 2022, housing associations and other stakeholders came together to highlight the urgent need for the levelling up agenda to address the challenges facing rural communities. 

Thank you to everyone who helped make it a success. A fantastic range of case studies, blogs, quotes, photographs, videos and podcasts shared during the week highlighted how housing associations are working to support the levelling up agenda in rural areas. Below is a summary of the work we did and a few of the many hightlights from the week.

Visits from local representatives

We asked NHF members to invite their local representatives to visit their schemes. Visits like this help our councillors, MPs and mayors understand the challenges in the area and everything housing associations do to help their constituents.

Events

Housing associations up and down the country held various events both online and off. We held two online events and attended several offline, including in the House of Lords.

Rural homelessness: England’s hidden crisis?

Rough sleepers in rural areas aren’t consistently captured by traditional methods of counting, meaning the issue is often underreported. This discussion brings together experts from universities, housing associations and charities to explore how we can work together to better support service users and drive down rural homelessness.

Is housing the key to levelling up the rural economy?

Levelling up could be an agenda tailor-made for rural communities. Rural jobs often pay less while training and development opportunities are harder to access. Despite this, rural housing is often more expensive than urban housing.