My father, Andrew Malone, who has died aged 78, left a great legacy in the world of non-profit social housing, care and support that traces its beginnings back to Ken Loach and Idi Amin.
Andrew was born in Luton to John Malone, a trade union organiser, and Vera (nee Tompkins). He attended Cardiff high school and then Birmingham University, where he studied classics and met my mother, Diana Bestwick; they married in 1967.
Inspired by the groundbreaking 1966 television play Cathy Come Home, which was written by Jeremy Sandford and directed by Loach, Andrew started working as a local organiser for Shelter in Bristol in 1970. When Idi Amin ordered the expulsion of Uganda’s Indian population in 1972, he secured funding from Nottingham city council and Shelter to house Ugandan refugees and homeless families. As a direct result, Nottingham Community Housing Association (NCHA) was born in 1973.
Under my father’s leadership the association bought properties across the city, refurbishing and letting them to people in need. NCHA also renovated alms houses throughout the East Midlands, improved homes formerly owned by the National Coal Board and became an important provider of rural social housing.
Andrew’s social vision and determination saw the association expand beyond housing to care and support, becoming an early provider of women’s refuges and opening homes for young care leavers, as well as disabled and elderly people. NCHA also began designing and building new homes, with increasingly ambitious development projects including the 1999 regeneration of Nottingham’s former Lace Market.
Passionate about innovation and partnership, Andrew was a member of the council of the National Federation of Housing Associations for many years, and served as chair of its East Midlands region. In 1988 he co-founded Housing Europe, the European Federation of Public, Cooperative and Social Housing, assuming its presidency in 1997.
Continuing to find inspiration in the arts, Andrew encouraged leading cultural figures to speak at NCHA annual meetings, including UA Fanthorpe, Andrew Motion and Alan Sillitoe.
In 2005 he was appointed OBE. Upon his retirement as chief executive in 2007, NCHA had about 8,000 properties and was a major provider of care and support services, remaining true to its mission to tackle homelessness. The organisation celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
Although he was a wheelchair-user for the last eight years of his life, Andrew vigorously pursued his many passions around the country and in continental Europe, bringing friends and family together for outings to jazz and opera, art galleries, literary events and cricket and rugby matches. And he always completed the daily cryptic crosswords in the Guardian and the Times.
He is survived by Diana, his daughters Laura, Anna and me, five grandchildren and his sister Pat.
