Betty Stevenson

Born to Rachael and Archibald Dow in Glasgow and brought up in Rylees Road, Penilee, she worked as a secretary and was for many years a shorthand typist at the Rolls-Royce factory in Hillington. It was there that she met Dougie Stevenson in 1954 and married him two years later.

The couple moved to Govanhill, in the late 1950s and eventually to Annandale Street in 1964 with their three children. She and Dougie lived in that tenement flat for the rest of her life.

The tenements were saved by the communities in Glasgow's inner city with the support from the visionary Assist Architects, housing associations and an eventual change of policy about demolition by the then Glasgow Corporation.

In the early 1980s, as owner-occupiers, Stevenson and a neighbour complained to their local housing association about their back courts and as a result having bought their £1 share in the association they became members of the committee of management. When the time came for the improvement of the tenement they lived in, the Stevensons became tenants of the association. She went on to become the secretary and then chairperson.

Govanhill Housing Association went on to improve more than 2000 tenement flats, refurbish buildings and develop new buildings. Unfortunately, funding began to become more of an issue in 2001 and Stevenson campaigned on the need to "finish the job" of improving the tenements in the area. Eventually this earned her the nickname Betty BTS Stevenson - BTS being the legal jargon for tenements in need of improvement (below tolerable standard). She was not shy about the use of the media and was comfortable being interviewed for radio and television.

Her resilience and charm took the campaign the length and breadth of Scotland, down to Westminster with the Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations and to Holyrood, where she managed to persuade the first housing minister in the new Scottish Parliament, Wendy Alexander, to come and see for herself. This resulted in an additional ring-fenced budget to help speed up the remaining work in the BTS homes.

Stevenson knew and spoke clearly as a resident on the strengths of community control and the use of local assets, resources and opportunities to do more than just housing. She was instrumental in establishing Govanhill Community Development Trust and looked to the trust to harness community enterprise and non-housing opportunities.

She helped many housing organisations over the teething pains as an appointee or by co-option and her contribution was recognised with the award of an MBE.

Stevenson was a member of the Council of the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations for five years and had a long association with Employers in Voluntary Housing (the employers' body for housing associations and social employers in Scotland).

She succeeded her good friend Helen McGregor as chair of EVH and picked up the baton and finished some of Helen's work such as developing links with long-term partners in the Pact-Arim movement in France.

Stevenson visited Brittany on a number of occasions before leading delegations to Lille, Paris and Marseilles. A formal partnership agreement was reached with the French in 2000 and involved the Chartered Institute of Housing in Scotland While chairing EVH, she helped its growth from a west of Scotland housing association body to being nationwide. Unfortunately, in 2004, just when she reached the end of her term of office she became ill.

Many people have contacted the family, Govanhill Housing Association and EVH since Stevenson died. They have all been positive about her role and clear about her strengths. Everyone remembers her as a determined woman who served her community and of Scotland with grace and charm. She won many friends.

To the end she stuck to her beliefs about community control and fought for her community that she saw as an extension of her family.

The leaders of Pact-Arim in France sent a message that read: "We are very sad. We send to Betty's family and to all of the EVH team our sincere sympathy. We keep a memory of Betty especially her smile, her kindness, her sparkling eyes and her elegance on her high heels. We'll keep Betty in our hearts."

With all this strenuous activity, she still managed to play an important role in her family and with neighbours and friends.

She is survived by her husband, Dougie; three children, Irene, Elizabeth and Alan; and two grandchildren, Amy and Matthew. By Elizabeth Stevenson, Anne Lear, Foster Evans