Content Wars – The Battle to Control the Narrative

There’s a battle underway in the housing sector — but it’s not being fought with bricks or budgets. It’s being fought with blogs, infographics, press releases, conferences, events, webinars, and reposted reports. A full-blown Content War — and the aim is simple: control the narrative.

There’s a battle underway in the housing sector — but it’s not being fought with bricks or budgets. It’s being fought with blogs, infographics, press releases, conferences, events, webinars, and reposted reports. A full-blown Content War — and the aim is simple: control the narrative.

Let’s start with Devonshires Solicitors. Last week, they published a summary of the Housing Ombudsman’s latest Spotlight report on repairs and maintenance. On the surface, it’s a neutral, even helpful breakdown. But beneath that, it reads like a strategic content play — one that gives a firm best known for defending housing associations against tenant complaints a foothold in the “we’re learning and improving” conversation.

Devonshires may call themselves housing law specialists, but too often they act more like enforcers for housing associations — intimidating tenants rather than supporting accountability. Their tactics can feel less like legal representation and more like strategic silencing.
I’ve not yet come into direct contact with them, although they have, from time to time, trawled my social media feeds and websites — presumably at the behest of a paying party irked by observations I’ve made. I’ve certainly been warned about them.

When it comes to the content war, it’s not just about what’s true — it’s about what’s visible. And Devonshires, the National Housing Federation, the Chartered Institute of Housing, and even campaigns like Stop Social Housing Stigma, are getting very good at looking like they’re listening. Their content is well-funded, clean, polished, reassuring. “We acknowledge the issue.” “We recognise the pain.” “We’re working to improve.” And yet, behind the scenes, tenants and residents continue to face delays, threats, disrepair, and silence.

Meanwhile, tenant-led platforms — websites like mine, local WhatsApp groups, campaign videos, podcasts — are starting to cut through. They’re not funded. They’re not polished. But they’re real. And that’s a threat to the old guard.

I’ve spoken before about the obsession housing associations have with controlling the narrative — I’ve experienced it firsthand. That was my original battle with GreenSquareAccord. It wasn’t that what I was saying was wrong. It was that I was upsetting the version of events they were trying to present. They didn’t want truth. They wanted control. So you pick your battles. You pick the ones you can win.

Let’s assume, for a moment, that housing associations — or at least many of them — simply cannot provide homes that are warm, safe, dry, and affordable. Let’s also assume that, even if they could, doing so would cost jobs. Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: if someone pushed a magic button tomorrow and fixed all the damp, mould, leaks, fire risks, and affordability issues, a huge number of people in this sector would suddenly be out of work. There’s money in failure. There’s a whole economy built around disrepair. Why fix the roof when you can hold another stakeholder workshop about it?

Take Ruth Cooke, CEO of GreenSquareAccord. She takes home almost £300,000 a year — for overseeing a housing association with a growing portfolio of unsafe, unsustainable homes. Every new development she signs off is a problem waiting to happen in 10 or 15 years’ time. And yet, she continues to collect a handsome wage, safe from the consequences of the failing model she represents. So why fix the system? Why even admit it’s broken?

If housing associations can’t win on outcomes, what can they win on? The narrative. So they flood the space with content — glossy reports, online toolkits, sector-wide pledges, and press releases. “We’re investing in improvements.” “We’ve launched a new strategy.” “Complaints are going down.” Are they? Or are fewer complaints being upheld because housing associations made it harder to complain in the first place? The very report Devonshires chose to highlight suggests exactly that.

Now, of course, we’ve got to consider how easy it is to take a report, run it through AI, and end up with something that looks different enough to publish on your organisation’s website. That’s AI. And look — I use AI. The image for this blog will be created with AI. I’ll then run it through Photoshop because I like to have final cut. I use AI to summarise reports, to help me write, to pull out the data that backs up my arguments. I’m dyslexic. Sitting at a keyboard wondering how to spell “available,” or whether there’s one M or two in “tomorrow,” breaks my flow. Dictating my ideas and having AI make them grammatically correct? That’s a tool. That’s accessibility.

But here’s the issue: housing associations, sector bodies, and legal firms are using AI too — not to empower residents, but to speed up the content churn. Take a Housing Ombudsman report, throw it into ChatGPT, spit out a thought piece. Slap it on your site. Publish it under your badge. Voila — you’ve joined the conversation. Except you haven’t. You’ve just echoed it. We’re not having a dialogue. We’re regurgitating data with a new spin, a new headline, and a new logo. It’s one big echo chamber — and no one’s actually listening.

And yet, these same institutions turn around and invite us to conferences. “Please sponsor this event.” “Please attend this roundtable.” And the theme of the event? Listening to the voice of the tenant. Is anyone starting to see how ridiculous this has become? Anyone else feeling cheated?

Tenant voices are out there. They’re loud. They’re clear. They’re organised. They’re on social media. They’re creating podcasts. They’re writing blogs. Activists like Kwajo Tweneboa built an entire platform through TikTok — and not just a platform, but a career. Not because he was flashy, but because he was effective. Because he showed the truth.

Signed Off - But Not Safe rap videos — one of which hit over 12,000 views — are another example. These aren’t corporate comms exercises. They’re the product of pain, pressure, and lived experience. And they’re working. When being ignored, called a liar, reports denied, safety issues pushed aside in order to maintain the narrative — “all is well, nothing to see, move on…”

When we create content that shines a damning light on firsthand issues, what do the big institutions do in response? They create more content. They try to shift the narrative back into their hands. They don’t like being called out. They don’t like being asked why they earn six-figure salaries while families sleep in mould-infested flats. They don’t want to explain why money is spent on events instead of repairs.

And that’s the fundamental question: if tenants are so vocal, if there is so much truth in the public domain, why do we need so many more events about “hearing tenant voices”?

We’re here. You just don’t like what we’re saying. The truth is here — you just don’t want to hear it. You don’t want to have the hard conversations because we’re asking hard questions. About wages. About priorities. About who benefits from this broken system. And the truth is — it’s not us. It’s the ones with the greedy pockets. The ones making a living off our silence. Off our disrepair. Off our fear.

Greedy or wicked minds?