The Riddings is a long sloping crescent of nondescript semi-detached houses, branching off into cul-de-sacs and loops. The layout is typical of a sleepy English suburb. But this particular suburb in Huddersfield achieved notoriety in 1990 as the setting for a BBC documentary, The Estate.

Local people still rankle at how they were portrayed, the producers playing to the stereotypes of dysfunctional families with uncontrollable children in squalid surroundings. Locals say most families were nothing like that, but the behaviour of a few became the yardstick by which all were judged. And they claim, with some justification, that the council used the area as a ‘dumping ground’ for people it considered too much trouble.

For decades media perceptions of council housing have been ruled by the belief that estates were dumping grounds - places where those who had nowhere else to go and weren’t really wanted anywhere else ended up. They are casually referred to as ‘sink estates’. But talk to people who live in them and you’ll find a host of stories. They are frequently stories of ordinary people trying to get by in difficult circumstances, sometimes failing, but often managing against extraordinary odds.

As you turn into Riddings Road from Woodhouse Hill you pass the Chestnut Centre, a low, modern, multi-purpose building with a library, a nursery, and a home for local services. From the centre a social enterprise, Fresh Horizons, runs a youth club, a housing repair service, training schemes and more. One of its latest projects is a scheme to bring empty private properties back into use.

Read all about it: the Chestnut Centre offers services run by local people

The startling thing about Fresh Horizons, when you compare it with many services in similar estates, is that the vast majority of the staff are local people - people who in other places might never dream of working in positions of responsibility serving their neighbourhood. The difference is that Fresh Horizons has faith in the abilities of local residents to do the jobs that need doing in their area. Unlike so many officials and policymakers, it hasn’t written them off.

This week the government launched its strategy for housing. It was a mixed bag, and most of the commentary was on whether or not the numbers would stack up to meet projected demand, or whether underwriting 95% loans for prospective homeowners was a good idea.

The numbers are important, particularly in the light of the £4bn taken out of housing finance as part of the government’s deficit-cutting programme. The housing strategy is a belated, limited admission of the failure of the private market to plug the gap left by the withdrawal of government investment. But the numbers are only part of the story.

There were a few nuggets in the housing strategy that point to the real story, which is that housing is first of all about people, not bricks and mortar. Providing affordable housing (whether rented or as a step towards ownership) is about giving people a foundation from which they can build their lives. A home isn’t just somewhere to be comfortable: without it, learning, employment, health and involvement in society are all hobbled.

One such nugget was the encouragement of what the government now calls ‘custom homes’ - that’s self-build to you and me - and particularly the willingness to turn over surplus public land to self-builders. Another was the promise of extra money to tackle the blight of empty homes.

The strategy highlighted the example of Almere in the Netherlands, a new community that includes a 100-hectare self-build zone, in which residents have to comply with broad design principles but have the freedom to build homes to suit their own needs.

The point about self-build is that it entrusts people to take responsibility for their own lives. People aren’t dumped on - they’re given a space to learn and develop skills while providing for their own needs in the way they consider best.

Unfortunately much of the government’s strategy is predicated on the idea that social housing is a safety net grudgingly provided to those who can prove they are most in need. There is little that echoes the attitude of the self-build proposals, which is that people can develop the skills and capacity to improve their lives and just need the space and the help to put those skills into practice.

If we’re to make the most of social housing in future, it needs to be a training ground, not a dumping ground. We simply can’t afford to shift millions of people into the category of ‘economically inactive’ and write off entire communities because the work that brought them into being is no longer there.

There is no reason why people who live in social housing estates should not be trained and employed to provide the services needed in their neighbourhoods, from housing repairs to street cleaning, from social care to generating their own renewable energy. It may be cheaper on paper to employ a contractor to deliver a standardised service, but if one of the functions of social housing is to help people in crisis get back on their feet, helping to run local services is far more worthwhile and effective than courses in CV writing and interview skills.

There could be even more. People who live in social housing estates could so what I call placemaking with dirty hands, turning over unused space to local food production; they could run their own apprenticeship schemes, training their kids as builders or electricians, gardeners or carers. They should be the people who build the homes of the future, maintain the ones we now have and care for the people who live in them. Our estates could become engines of enterprise instead of drains on public resources.

Such an attitude needs to run right through our public services and social policies, providing opportunities for people to learn and to flourish where they are, not in some knowledge economy nirvana where the government or corporations or political theorists would like them to be. When all are able to contribute to the wellbeing of the places they live in and share the benefits, we may just start to inch our way towards real equality.