Leicester Newarke Housing Association began life in 1967 as Leicester Students Housing Association - the result of an initiative by student union leaders and lecturers at Leicester Polytechnic. They had become concerned at the growing problems of finding decent accommodation for young people in full-time education. The Association was founded on charitable rules and remains an exempt charity to this day.

The early years were a period of struggle against great odds and much voluntary effort went into obtaining the first properties and getting them ready for letting. After 1974, the availability of the Housing Association Grant and the support of Leicester City Council and the Housing Corporation enabled the Association to develop further, but its specialist character meant that it could not aspire to the spectacular growth of general needs associations. Thus, the Association remains a small but effective provider to its customer groups. Our membership of the Eastern Shires Housing Group is anticipated to lead to significant growth.

The most recent student housing development, funded entirely with private finance, took us up to just under 500 tenancies. People in full-time education currently make up around 85% of all tenants.

The Association employs twelve full-time, and seven part-time staff. The Association owns a broad range of properties from new-build flats through to terraced houses fully rehabilitated with Housing Association Grant. Several of the properties are arranged and let as shared housing, enabling us to offer them at very economical rents inclusive of all services and Council Tax.

Within the customer groups we serve we have always aimed to operate on an equal opportunities basis and we now aim to house people from white and black and minority ethnic communities on a roughly 50/50 basis. We also like to have tenant participation in decision-making on the Board and undertake much sampling of tenant opinion on the quality of our services.

Our self-contained properties funded with Housing Association Grant are subject to 50% nominations arrangements with Leicester City Council.

A distinguishing feature of our operation is that we let most of our properties fully furnished. This is intended to meet the needs of our customer groups, many of which do not have furniture or much in the way of possessions or are in some sense ‘mobile’.

The housing problems of young people and students are great, with many condemned to live in poor quality and unsafe houses in multiple occupation in the private rented sector. One of our key objectives remains to increase our provision of good quality and safe accommodation to reduce the numbers who have to live in those conditions.

The Association works with Leicester City Council on general social housing matters and is an active member of the National Housing Federation.