Council Evicts Family From Temporary Accommodation For Not Attending Viewing 180 Miles Away

 A council has blamed government benefit restrictions for its decision to evict a family with three children from temporary accommodation after they were unable to attend a viewing for a home more than 180 miles away. Waltham Forest Council stated that it had a “duty to taxpayers” over the decision to end the temporary accommodation it was providing for the family in Lewisham. The council had a duty to house the family, but in June it issued a private sector discharge offer for a home in Stoke-on-Trent. But the family said they were unable to attend a viewing because the father had just started a new job in London. Read more on Inside Housing.

https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/council-evicts-family-from-temporary-accommodation-for-failing-to-attend-viewing-180-miles-away-71794

Councils ‘Challenging’ Ministers After Exclusion From £1bn HRA Headroom Deal

Councils which worked with government to develop new funding flexibility for new homes have hit out at ministers after being excluded from bidding. Two councils that worked with government officials for more than a year to develop plans to allow councils to increase their borrowing capacity have said they were “disappointed” to discover they would not be allowed to bid for the fund. The government revealed last week that only councils where private rents are £50 more than social rents would be allowed to bid. This saw Sheffield, Stoke-on-Trent, and Newark and Sherwood councils excluded. Read more on Inside Housing.

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Council Relaunches ‘£1 Homes’ Scheme

The project, officially called Reviving Communities, aims to bring empty and dilapidated homes back into use. The authority is investing £1.5m to purchase and refurbish up to 25 privately owned vacant homes in the Hanley area of the city. Local residents will then be able to buy a home which has been renovated by the council for £1, paying for the cost of the works through a 10-year low-interest loan of £30,000. Under the first phase of the scheme launched in 2013, 33 of the council’s own properties were transformed and reoccupied – and it will reinvest loan repayments from buyers of those homes to help fund the second phase. Read more on Inside Housing.

Council Forced To Evict 25 Tenants Due To 'Bedroom Tax'

Dozens of council tenants have been evicted from their homes – after being unable to pay their rent due to the controversial bedroom tax. And they are the first residents who have been booted out of their properties by Stoke-on-Trent City Council where the spare room subsidy is the sole reason which forced them to miss rent payments. The authority has confirmed that in the last year a total of 65 tenants were evicted, with many already in rent arrears before the introduction of bedroom tax in April 2013. But 25 of that number went into arrears purely because of the levy, after previously being able to afford their rent. Read more on the Stoke Sentinel website.

Move To Midlands or Be Homeless

A London mum has branded her local council “inhumane” – because she has been told to move to the Midlands. Cecilia Bruce-Annan, from Edgware, north-west London, has been told to move with her three children to Stoke-on-Trent because of the benefits cap. The 42-year-old, who says she has no idea where Stoke even is, says she has been treated viciously by Harrow Council. She has been told to leave her housing association home of three years by September 4 after racking up rent arrears of more than £2,000 after falling into debt because of the newly imposed cap. Read more on the Birmingham Mail website.

Stoke and Liverpool £1 Homes: Are Schemes a Success?

It's 18 months since Liverpool launched its £1 homes scheme, so why has no-one moved in while bargain-hungry homeowners in Stoke-on-Trent are rushing to buy the same reasonably-priced roosts? Liverpool City Council launched its pilot scheme to buy a house for £1 in a blaze of publicity.The council offered the chance to buy one of 20 empty homes for the small sum if the new owners pledged to refurbish them and stay for at least five years. But almost a year since the first buyer was handed the keys to his new house in Granby, he has still not moved in. Meanwhile, a similar scheme in Stoke-on-Trent is almost complete, with 31 out of 35 homes occupied. Read more on the BBC website.

Council Flats to Be Rented Privately

High-Rise council flats and family homes are set to be offered for rent to professionals – because tenants do not want to live there. Stoke-on-Trent City Council could become a private landlord to bring in rent for dozens of properties it has been unable to match with people on its council house waiting list. There are also a number of empty three-bed houses which could be rented out privately. If the 'intelligent letting' scheme is approved by cabinet, the homes will be rented out on a first-come-first-served basis. Potential tenants must prove they:

·         Can afford the rent;

·         Have no history of causing anti-social behaviour;

·         Don't currently own a home;

·         Work or live in the city;

Read more on the Thisisstaffordshire website.

Houses for £1 and a Loan to Do Them Up

During the past few months the city councils in Stoke-on-Trent and Liverpool have been inundated with applications after launching projects allowing people to buy a derelict home for just £1 upfront.  Now the charity Empty Homes is offering a variation on this theme: a 25% stake in an empty house for £1. Ten two-bedroom terraced houses located in Stoke-on-Trent are up for grabs, and you don't need to be a resident of the city to apply – it is open to anyone in the UK who doesn't already own a property and meets the criteria.

We can probably expect to see more of these schemes being launched after communities minister Don Foster, who has visited the Stoke-on-Trent projects, announced a £91m government cash injection to bring back into use more than 6,000 empty and derelict homes and commercial premises across England. Read more on the Guardian website.

Second Council Invites Applicants to Buy £1 Homes

Liverpool City Council is inviting applications from people interested in buying a house from the Council for a nominal price of £1. Applicants will go through an evaluation and selection process and those who are successful will be offered a property. In this pilot there are 20 houses available.  The successful applicants will then be given an opportunity to improve the property within a prescribed timescale to the quality and specification set out by the Council. The assessment over whether this standard has been achieved will be at the sole discretion of the Council. If the assessment confirms full compliance with requirements then the property will be sold to the successful applicant for £1. Application forms for the scheme are available after 4,000 people registered interest.  This is two days after Stoke-on-Trent started its application for a similar scheme for which it had already received 600 expressions of interest.

Read more on the Liverpool Council website.

Hundreds Interested In £1 Homes

A council which is selling homes for £1 has recorded 600 expressions of interest as it launches its application process for the scheme. The plan is for 35 rundown homes in the city to be brought back into use. The council will sell the homes for £1 and initially cover the costs of refurbishing the homes, which the home owners will have to pay back over a set period of time.  Applicants must satisfy various criteria. These include having lived in their home in Stoke-on-Trent for the past three years, having an income of between £18,000 and £30,000 a year and being able to commit to living in their new property for at least five years. Read more on Inside Housing.

Housing Policy, Newham Style

A local authority that has major problems with its housing waiting list decided to demolish a structurally sound council estate and send its residents elsewhere. The mooted replacement, to which they then gave their enthusiastic backing, was a new campus for University College London. It's so obviously immoral that you could easily assume this was a malevolent, Shirley Porter-style episode from the height of Thatcherism. It is, instead, the policy of a local authority that has 60 Labour councillors out of 60 and a high-profile Labour mayor – a one-party state.  The London borough of Newham – the borough in question – recently made the news when it transpired they had asked a housing association in Stoke-on-Trent to rehouse hundreds of those on its massive waiting list. The association refused, but it was unclear what the leaked request really meant – was this political theatre on the part of the Labour council, drawing attention to what Tory policy was forcing it to do?  Read more on the Guardian website.

Homeless Families to Be Expelled From London by Councils

Local authorities in London are preparing to send thousands of homeless families to live in temporary homes outside the capital, in defiance of ministerial demands that people should continue to be housed locally.  They say rising rents in London coupled with the introduction next April of stringent benefit caps leave them in an impossible position, with no option but to initiate an outflow of poorer families from the capital by placing homeless households in cheaper areas, often many miles from their home borough. Draft guidance issued by ministers in May says councils must "as far as is reasonably practicable" offer accommodation for homeless families within the borough. This was ordered by the then housing minister, Grant Shapps, after reports that Newham council planned to relocate households to Stoke-on-Trent, a proposal Shapps, now Conservative party chairman, described as "unfair and wrong".   Guardian research shows London councils have acquired rental properties in Luton, Northampton, Broxbourne, Gravesend, Dartford, Slough, Windsor, Margate, Hastings, Epping Forest, Thurrock and Basildon, and are considering accommodation as far away as Manchester, Hull, Derby, Nottingham, Birmingham and Merthyr Tydfil in south Wales. Read more on the Guardian website.

Council Agrees To Sell Homes for £1

An innovative housing programme which will see empty homes renovated and brought back into use is expected to be rolled out across Stoke-on-Trent. The £3m scheme, believed to be the first of its kind in the country, will see a cluster of 35 council owned empty homes sold with the benefit of a loan to make essential repairs. The full cost of each house will be an up to £30,000 loan to carry out work to bring the house up to the decent home standard plus a £1 to buy the property. The target customers are working families who already live and work in Stoke-on-Trent for a certain period of time and are on low income and struggled to get a mortgage. In addition to loans of up to £30,000 there will also be additional funding made available to private landlords of empty homes in these areas to bring their properties back to a decent living standard.  Read more on the Stoke on Trent council website.

Council to Sell Empty Homes for £1 to Tenants Hit By Housing Benefit Cuts

Stoke-on-Trent City Council wants to offer loans of £30,000 to families hit by housing benefit cuts to refurbish empty homes which it will sell to them for £1.  The measure is part of a move by the council to support tenants hit by welfare reform, bring back into use empty homes and promote home ownership. From next April some 660,000 working age claimants will face housing benefit cuts of £56 a month on average for having “spare” bedrooms. In addition to the under-occupancy penalties, a household benefit cap will also apply limiting families to £500 a week. The council is match-funding £1.5m of the Government’s empty homes funding with £1.5m from its own capital allowance to get the scheme up and running. Read more on 24dash.

Homesteading Plan to Save Homes from Demolition

A charity is hoping to demonstrate the effectiveness of a model for bringing empty homes back into use after receiving government funding.  Empty Homes will use £91,000 to help bring 10 homes in Stoke that had been scheduled for demolition back into use through a homesteading scheme. David Ireland, chief executive of Empty Homes, said: ‘This is a terrace of homes that was going to be demolished [by the council] but they’re going to be transferred so a housing association owns 50 per cent and the other 50 per cent will be sold at a reduced amount for people to renovate.’  The money from the CLG will be used for essential external work, with the buyers of the properties funding the internal changes.  Mr Ireland said buyers must use the property as their sole home and must be able to support a mortgage.  Read more on the Empty Homes website.

Councils Asked To Reveal Numbers of Displaced LHA Claimants

Labour’s Shadow Housing Minister and Shadow Minister for London have written to all London councils asking them to clarify how many homeless people are being housed outside the capital.  The London borough of Newham revealed on Tuesday that it had written to over 1,000 housing associations around the country – including one in Stoke-on-Trent – in an attempt to find temporary accommodation for homeless families.  Jack Dromey MP and Tessa Jowell MP have written to all London boroughs in a bid to see the “full picture”.  Mr Dromey, who has also written to Housing Minister Grant Shapps on the matter, said: "Britain is facing a growing housing crisis and the Government appears to be completely out of touch with the impact on families.”  Reacting to Newham Council’s move to seek temporary accommodation in Stoke-on-Trent, Grant Shapps told the BBC it was “unfair and wrong” and that councils had been advised “not to do this”.  Read more on 24dash.

Families Priced Out By Benefits Cap

Shelter is urging the Government to consider the damage inflicted on families by cuts to housing benefit.  Commenting on the news that Newham council in East London is trying to find homes as far away as Stoke for families priced out of their area by rising rents and the Government's new cap on housing benefits, Shelter’s Chief Executive Campbell Robb said: ‘This is the terrifying reality of our housing crisis today – hundreds of families potentially forced to move half way across the country, uprooted from schools, support networks and employment opportunities. ‘Most worryingly, this is only the thin end of the wedge, as further reductions in the housing safety net start to bite over the coming months. ‘The dangerous cocktail of cuts to housing benefit and spiralling rents is making finding a decent home increasingly unaffordable for families across the country.’  Read more on the Shelter website.

Newham Plans to 'Export' 500 Families Blocked

A housing association in Stoke-on-Trent is set to block a London borough's request to take on 500 families in "immediate need" of a roof over their head and fears such a move could lead to the rise of "divisive right-wing extremism".   Labour-run Newham council says the Government's decision to cap Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates is "exacerbating the problem" and making it harder for low-income families to get a roof over their head.  The news coincides with a survey from the National Landlords Association (NLA) last week which found that the majority of private landlords say they can’t afford to rent to housing benefit claimants because of the caps to the LHA.  It's understood Newham has written to the Brighter Futures Housing Association in Stoke, offering it the "opportunity" to lease homes to it, where it would pay it 90% of the LHA plus £60 per week.  Brighter Futures estimates the scheme could save Newham Council £5,250 a year for a family housed in a three-bedroom home.  Read a copy of the Newham letter on the Guardian website.