Housing Champions

SHN's Housing Champions feature returns with Lorna Cameron, chief executive of Horizon Housing, who speaks to Margaret Taylor about the inextricable link between accessible housing and social care. It is almost 35 years since Lorna Cameron started her career at what was Strathclyde Regiona

Jimmy Black relives a few housing decades with Laurie Naumann, a campaigner on single homelessness, and a founder of Kingdom Housing Association. This is a story about Laurie Naumann, who recently retired after 44 years as a board member at Kingdom Housing Association. But it’s also a step bac

Jimmy Black cycled to Stornoway to meet Calum (Barney) MacKay, chair of TPAS Scotland and long-standing tenant activist. Barney is a trade unionist, and that explains a lot. Trades unions teach their active members how to do many useful things, including basic skills, like how to run a meeting or th

Jimmy Black meets the energetic Evie Copland, multi-award-winner and housing evangelist. “The biggest problem is … how do I change the world with this?” Evie Copland is finishing her Master's in Housing Studies, and she has been a distinguished student. In 2021 she won the Malcolm

Jimmy Black meets Bill Banks, retiring CEO of the multi award-winning Kingdom Group. Bill Banks looks relaxed, calm and entirely at home in his relatively modest office at Kingdom Housing Association. He’s a man at the height of his powers with a very solid track record of achievement. But Bil

Fanchea Kelly has been at the centre of events in Scottish housing since the 1980s, and will soon leave Blackwood after a stellar career. Jimmy Black asked her to share some memories with Scottish Housing News. Over 9,000 miles from Scotland, Fanchea Kelly was sitting in an Australian radio studio i

In the second instalment of his Housing Champion interviews, Jimmy Black speaks to housing veteran Tony Cain. You would think Tony Cain would understand how housing works. He’s been head of housing in a council, an inspection manager with Communities Scotland and a policy officer working in go

Launching our new monthly feature of Housing Champion interviews, Jimmy Black profiles Kirsty Wells, director of consultancy and partnership at Housemark and the newly appointed chair of WISH Scotland. Kirsty Wells began plunging into the chilly waters of reservoirs and the North Sea during COV