Getting to know… Robert
We sat down with Finance and Audit Subcommitee Member, Robert Spain, to find out more about what attracted him to join the jLiving team, what he brings to the role and his hopes for jLiving over the next five years.
- What attracted you to become a Finance and Audit Subcommittee Member at jLiving?
I am grateful for the opportunity to try to put some of my experience towards the good of the community and so as an accountant I was attracted to joining the Finance and Audit Subcommittee. I have long been interested in jLiving specifically as a relative lived in one of jLiving’s properties many years back and I occasionally slept over on the floor, I confess quite possibly against the rules. This is my chance to pay that back!
- How long have you been involved with the organisation?
I just joined in the Summer/Autumn of 2021, so have not yet attended a meeting as at the time of writing.
- What do you feel you bring to the role of Finance and Audit Subcommittee Member?
A former boss told me that joining an organisation in this way is like being the good friend who’ll tell you if your new haircut isn’t great: supportive but honest and only acting in your best interests. Serving on the Finance and Audit Subcommittee gives me the privilege of playing a similar role: joining the discussion and friendly challenge of the numbers and financial processes of jLiving. I bring with me the hair having turned grey through a couple of decades of accountancy, a keen interest in what everyone else in the room has to say, and a willingness to ask the same question again when I don’t understand the first answer.
- Did you always have a particular interest in social housing and if so, what is the background to that?
No, but it’s something that has developed from working in a care/nursing agency many years ago and then from jobs in real estate, infrastructure and consumer protection.
- Do you think there are issues or challenges in providing good quality social housing and what are they?
Unfortunately, there are many, not least that ‘good quality’ will mean different things to different people. Social housing providers have the precarious balancing act of delivering core services for a fair rent, but not necessarily the maximum rent. Within that, there are increased pressures from COVID, changing fire/safety concerns and changes to benefits, among other issues, all of which make the tightrope walked by social housing providers ever narrower.
- Does the provision of social housing in the Jewish community bring any of its own challenges?
The cliché about two Jews and three opinions comes to mind and the provision of communal facilities brings the challenges of catering (metaphorically but potentially also literally) in order to welcome different streams and observances of the community. The relatively few areas which host Jewish communities places some constraints, but there is a migration within the community also. I was once told by of the communal organisations that they estimated most synagogue/communities had a 50-year lifespan, far shorter than the lifespan of bricks and mortar.
- Do you think there is any stigma around social housing?
Quite possibly for some people, but that would be their problem. Stigma is like beauty: it’s in the eye of the beholder. Social housing is a vital service like any other; it should be viewed no differently.
- Tell us something about yourself that no-one would know!
Erm… I never actually read ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, even though I may perhaps have, inadvertently, just a little bit, given the impression that I had done so. I only hope my old school friends aren’t reading this!