HOW WE OPERATE

Niche CBS is a Community Benefit Society which provides Supported Accommodation for Single Person Households who cannot sustain a home and live independently and safely without support. The Society’s ethos and values are the culmination of over 25 years of working within the long-term rental market.

It is through our experience of every role in the sector that we have developed the successful and holistic integration of the building’s management AND tenant support. So ensuring both are personal enough and consistent enough, to build the strength of relationship required to truly support residents to improve their lives and transition back into mainstream housing options whenever possible.

Our management system is driven by 3 simple principles – (1) people build relationships, not apps or screens; (2) it is not a house, but a home that changes people’s lives; and (3) we are always ‘caring’, despite not providing formal personal ‘care’.

These principles combined with our small teams of housing support officers (HSOs) who are on-site 5 days a week, contactable 24/7, and dedicated to only their specific group of residents or buildings, promote the consistent interaction and feeling of security for our residents on which to thrive. The day-to-day social support and management style ensures an inspiring, self-policing, self-supportive micro-community within our buildings. 

Each HSO team is empowered through our short management chain and the autonomy we give them to build their own communities and tenant bodies within ‘their’ buildings. 

These small and focused teams dramatically increase the accountability, the speed of information sharing, the ability of all team members to be continually aware of both long-term evolving tenant situations and more immediate ‘crises’, and the prompt implementation of self-determined solutions.
Building Maintenance is shared across different HSO teams.