Building on TSMs: Understanding the connection between home, belonging and trust
The future of housing cannot be built around averages
A recurring theme from Housing 2026 in Manchester last week was that the future of housing cannot be built around averages. Whether discussing resident engagement, service design, trust or community investment, there was a growing recognition that people experience home in profoundly different ways. Expectations differ according to life stage, lived experiences, family circumstances, capability and local context. The things that create security, belonging and pride for one resident are not necessarily the same as those that matter most to another. Trust can be remarkably fragile when residents' concerns are funnelled through processes built around the needs of an imagined average customer. Without empathy, flexibility and clear ownership, even well-intentioned services can leave people feeling unheard and unsupported.
It was a theme we explored in our own session on Dropping the ACT, or Average Customer Trap. The challenge with designing services around an average customer is that, in practice, no such person exists. When organisations optimise for averages, they often create experiences that fail to fully meet anybody's needs, leading to unnecessary friction, duplicated effort and resources being directed towards solving symptoms rather than underlying causes. The organisations making the greatest progress are those that understand the different groups within their communities and recognise that trust and satisfaction are achieved through multiple, distinct routes.
The question we have been exploring through our own research is 'are we measuring enough of what actually makes somewhere feel like home?'
TSMs tell us how residents feel about their landlord, but not necessarily their home
The Tenant Satisfaction Measures introduced by the Regulator of Social Housing have rightly sharpened the sector's focus on accountability, trust and service performance. They provide an essential understanding of how residents experience their landlord, covering everything from repairs and complaints to neighbourhood management and overall satisfaction.
Fundamentally, however, they are measures of organisational performance. They tell us how people feel about their housing provider, but much less about how people feel about the place they call home and their lived experiences. Our experience suggests those things are far more closely connected than is currently recognised.
TSMs do not explicitly capture pride in the home, feelings of belonging, emotional attachment to place, the extent to which residents feel rooted within their community, or whether people feel able to shape their environment so that it reflects who they are. Yet these are not soft measures or peripheral considerations. They may, in fact, be leading indicators of many of the outcomes Housing Associations care about most.
The question is not whether TSMs matter. They do. The opportunity is to understand whether feelings about home help explain the trust, advocacy and satisfaction that organisations are working so hard to build.
The emotional benefits of home are not experienced equally
Our recent research into the meaning of home reinforces that point. Across the UK, comfort (60%), safety (55%) and family (51%) form the emotional foundations of what home means to people. Yet those living in social and private rented accommodation are consistently less likely than homeowners to associate their homes with feelings such as safety (47% compared with 61%), comfort (51% compared with 66%), independence (18% compared with 25%) and sanctuary (23% compared with 36%). They are also less likely to say that they love their home (47% versus 62%) or feel proud of where they live (34% versus 47%).
If those emotional experiences differ, it is reasonable to ask whether trust, advocacy and satisfaction differ as a consequence. The question is not simply whether people are happy with their landlord, but whether the conditions that help people feel at home also strengthen the relationship they have with the organisation providing it.
These differences matter because they suggest that the experience of home extends well beyond the physical condition of a property. A home is where people establish routines, build relationships, create identity and find stability in an increasingly demanding world. The emotional benefits that people derive from home are not being experienced equally across different housing tenures, and that has implications not only for wellbeing, but potentially for the relationship residents have with the organisations that provide those homes.
The ability to personalise a space tells a similar story. The largest gap between renters and homeowners relates to creating outdoor spaces, with 41% of renters saying they are able to do this compared with 66% of homeowners. Differences also exist in decorating and styling spaces to reflect personal tastes (45% versus 58%) and displaying photographs, artwork and personal keepsakes (39% versus 48%).
These may appear to be small acts, but they are often the mechanisms through which people transform a property into a home. They create ownership, agency and identity. They allow people to see themselves reflected in the spaces they inhabit.
Pride, belonging and community may be leading indicators of trust
The challenge for Housing Associations is that none of this is explicitly captured within existing satisfaction frameworks. TSMs help us understand repairs, complaints, safety and neighbourhood management. Those dimensions of pride, belonging and emotional connection are largely absent from them.
Those are not soft measures or peripheral considerations. They may, in fact, be leading indicators of many of the outcomes housing providers care about most. The experience of home does not neatly separate into landlord interactions and daily life. Repairs teams, community investment, neighbourhood services and resident engagement all contribute to a broader emotional experience. Positive feelings about home itself may create goodwill that strengthens overall satisfaction scores and deepens trust in the organisation providing those services.
Similarly, residents who feel pride and belonging are more likely to become advocates for both their neighbourhood and their housing provider. In a sector increasingly focused on reputation, attracting new residents and demonstrating social value, that matters enormously.
The experience of home does not stop at the front door
One of the strongest messages from Housing 2026 was the importance of communities. Yet communities are still too often treated as something that sits alongside a housing provision rather than at the heart of it. Investment in placemaking, resident participation and neighbourhood initiatives is frequently framed as a social good rather than a strategic capability.
The opportunity may be considerably bigger than that. Strong local connections reduce isolation, encourage participation, improve information sharing and create informal support networks that ultimately reduce pressure on formal services. They create resilience within communities and, in doing so, resilience within the organisations themselves.
Our research found that renters place greater importance on access to shops (50% compared with 40% of homeowners) and public transport (52% compared with 39%), reinforcing the idea that home is experienced through the wider neighbourhood as much as through the property itself.
The question for Housing Associations is therefore not simply whether community investment is valuable, but which forms of investment genuinely strengthen belonging and what downstream effect that has on trust, satisfaction, complaints, advocacy and retention.
Moving from correlation to causation
This is where the opportunity becomes particularly interesting. Traditional TSM programmes provide an essential snapshot of resident sentiment at a point in time. They tell us what people think about their landlord. What they are less able to explain is what shapes trust and satisfaction over time.
Why do some residents remain highly satisfied despite service failures?
Why do others remain dissatisfied even when operational metrics are strong?
What role does neighbourhood identity play in shaping trust?
Which interventions genuinely strengthen belonging?
How do pride, agency and community connection influence relationships with landlords?
Answering those questions requires a richer evidence base. It means connecting traditional measures with additional emotional indicators. Does pride in the home predict advocacy? Does belonging strengthen trust? Which community investments create measurable value? Does feeling listened to and empowered reduce complaints escalation?
The real opportunity for the sector may be to move beyond asking whether tenants are satisfied with their landlord and instead understand what creates a sense of home, and how that experience shapes the relationship people have with the organisations that provide it.
If belonging, pride and community connection improve trust, advocacy and resilience, then investment in those areas ceases to be a social programme operating at the margins of housing provision. It becomes a strategic lever for improving both resident outcomes and organisational performance.
The importance of dropping the ACT (Average Customer Trap)
There is no universal definition of home. For some residents, independence and privacy matter most. For others, community, safety or family connections sit at the centre of their experience. The challenge for housing providers is not simply to improve an average score, but to understand the different drivers that shape trust and satisfaction across different groups of people.
This is where the combination of Tenant Segmentations and Insight Communities becomes particularly powerful.
Tenant Segmentations provide the strategic understanding of who residents are, what they value and how their needs differ. Insight Communities create the ongoing dialogue that allows organisations to move beyond annual snapshots, test interventions, understand changing needs and connect emotional experiences with operational outcomes.
Together, they help Housing Associations drop the ACT by replacing assumptions with evidence and averages with understanding. They also help organisations direct finite resources towards the interventions that create the greatest impact, reducing friction and ensuring investment is focused on the things that genuinely strengthen trust, belonging and resident experience.
Ultimately, it is not whether TSMs matter. They do. It is whether understanding how people feel about their homes helps us better understand how they feel about their landlords.
Our experience is that it does. The organisations that understand the connection between home and landlord relationships build stronger trust, deeper advocacy and more resilient communities. In turn, that reduces friction, strengthens reputation and creates better long-term outcomes for both residents and the organisation itself.
Contact us to discuss how we can help your organisation drop the ACT.