Don't Make Us Move In A Pandemic, Plead Tenants In 'Dire' Council Housing

Families living in temporary accommodation in a dilapidated former care home in south London – some for several years – are fighting moves to rehouse them miles away to make way for a new development which doesn’t yet have planning permission. Despite government guidelines urging social landlords not to put pressure on residents to move during lockdown, the families say they have been under constant stress since last summer when they discovered that plans had been drawn up for the new development. Read more on the Guardian website.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/31/dont-make-us-move-in-a-pandemic-plead-tenants-in-dire-council-housing 

Council Demands HS2 Funds Rehousing Of Hundreds Of Tenants

A London council has demanded that the company building High Speed 2 (HS2) funds the rehousing of hundreds of its tenants, whose homes it claims will be made “virtually uninhabitable” by rail works. Camden Council has threatened to report HS2 Limited to parliament over breaching assurances on noise levels made while legislation setting the framework for the project was being passed if it does not agree to a compensation deal and has notified the Department for Transport. The local authority warned it “will be forced to take matters into its own hands” if a solution for residents is not found. Read more on Inside Housing.

https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/council-demands-hs2-to-fund-rehousing-of-hundreds-of-tenants-68304#:~:text=A%20London%20council%20has%20demanded,virtually%20uninhabitable%E2%80%9D%20by%20rail%20works.&text=It%20said%20the%20firm%20has,mitigation%20measures%20promised%20in%202015

Homelessness Set To Rise In Wake Of Section 21 Abolition

Tenant eviction specialists, Landlord Action, says that as many as 50% of Section 21 cases they handle are as a result of tenants wanting to be re-housed by the council. They believe the abolition of Section 21, and subsequent expansion of Section 8, could put thousands of tenants at greater risk of receiving a County Court Judgement (CCJ) and ending up homeless as local councils will not be obliged to re-house those with rent arrears judgements. Read more on the Property Reporter website.

https://www.propertyreporter.co.uk/landlords/homelessness-set-to-rise-in-wake-of-section-21-abolition.html

UK Social Landlords Rehouse “The Homeless?”They Don’t As The Facts Show!

1.       Last years data reveal UK housing associations let 167,000 general needs properties and UK councils let 110,000 – a combined social housing total of 268,000

2.       Council and housing association landlords allocated 28% of this 268,000 figure to rehouse homeless persons / families each year.  This is 75,000 per year

3.       UK homeless numbers have a 425,000 rehousing need each year

Therefore the UK’s social landlords only rehouse 17.6% of the homeless persons and families that the UK creates each year as that is all they CAN rehouse! Read more on the Speye Joe blog.

https://speyejoe2.wordpress.com/2019/02/14/uk-social-landlords-rehouse-the-homelessthey-dont-as-the-facts-show/

Councils 'Forcing Homeless Families To Relocate Miles Away'

Local authorities are unlawfully resettling homeless families in temporary housing far away from their local area, forcing them to spend hours travelling to schools and health services, a study has found. The housing charity Shelter says some councils are guilty of unsafe practices by pressurising homeless families into accepting unsuitable housing up to 100 miles from where they live, causing them unnecessary hardship. Despite official guidance requiring councils to place families where practical in the borough in which they are resident, Shelter says authorities in London are now moving households out of area “as a matter of course”.  Read more on the Observer website.

Policy Targeting Homeless Families Is 'Tantamount To Social Cleansing’

Charities and politicians are demanding urgent changes to housing policy across Britain and warning that thousands of homeless children's lives may be at risk because they are disappearing from support services after being rehoused. The calls come after an investigation by The Independent uncovered cases of homeless children dying from neglect and abuse after families were moved out of their local authority boundaries. Other evidence in the report suggested that the transfer of homeless families to other parts of the country could have resulted in suicides and miscarriages. Figures obtained exclusively by The Independent show that at least 64,704 homeless families were moved out by London boroughs between July 2011 and June 2015, with more recent data yet to be collated. Read more on the Independent website.

Cameron’s Talk Of ‘Sink Estates’ Hides The Reality Behind Council Housing

David Cameron has unveiled the newest target of Tory policy- so-called ‘sink estates’. According to the PM, such estates need to be emptied and demolished, with little thought as to the communities that live there and where they will be re-housed- or what will replace them. This narrative stigmatises those living in social housing in the same way that his government has consistently stigmatised those on benefits. Rather than attacking tenants directly, Cameron is instead attacking the supposed conditions in which they live, allowing his rhetoric to pass as benevolent social reform rather than the continued ideologically driven undermining of the British welfare state.  Cameron was unable to guarantee that tenants forced to move due to redevelopment would be rehoused in their local area, let alone in the actual developments that replace existing estates. By invoking the spectre of the sink estate he attempted to pass off social cleansing as an opportunity for social mobility. Read more on the Independent website.

Homeless Wandsworth Families to Be Housed As Far Away As Birmingham

As part of the borough’s homelessness battle the council has arranged 62 properties for private licence agreements, 19 of which are out of the borough. The areas include Kingston, Sutton, Reigate and Banstead, Merton, Croydon, Lambeth, Birmingham, Portsmouth City, Leicester, West Bromwich and High Wycombe. Last year, the council’s £5m project of buying properties for its homeless in less expensive areas of outer London was revealed. Now it has emerged that £1.25m emergency funding has been agreed to help with ongoing pressures and a second £5m fund will be used this year to buy large units of temporary accommodation inside and outside the borough. Read more on the Wandsworth Guardian website.

Tory Council Has Created Housing Crisis

A Tory council's "coordinated policies to cut affordable homes" has created a housing crisis, a new study has claimed. The report says that by selling council homes on the open market, emptying and demolishing blocks of affordable housing, and allowing developers to make excess profits by including no low-cost homes in major schemes, Hammersmith and Fulham Council has fuelled a housing shortage in the borough. The report, prepared for Hammersmith MP Andy Slaughter by housing expert Martin Peach, also accuses the local authority of manipulating statistics to hide housing need and classing households on incomes of £80,000 as a priority for rehousing. Read more on 24dash.

Westminster Slammed For Failing on Overcrowding Pledge

Westminster City Council has been slammed by Labour for failing to deliver on a pledge to tackle overcrowding in the borough. In 2009, the Tory-led council pledged to rehouse 1,000 overcrowded households between 2009/10 and 2013/14. However, according to council figures, in April 2010 there were 1,335 overcrowded tenants waiting to be rehoused but by January 2014 the figure was 1,035 - just 300 less than four years earlier. Read more on 24dash.

MP Calls for Rural Communities to Be Freed From Bedroom Tax

A Conservative MP has called on the government to make small rural communities exempt from the bedroom tax. Anne McIntosh, MP for Thirsk and Malton and chair of the House of Commons environment, food and rural affairs select committee, said a "chronic shortage" of one and two-bedroom homes in her north east constituency made it difficult for people to downsize. Referring to a recent report published by the committee, Miss McIntosh said: "We recommended that small rural communities should be exempt from the bedroom tax.  In my area, there is a chronic shortage of one and two-bedroom homes. Until such a time as we can rehouse those who wish to downsize, allowing larger families to move into larger properties, housing will remain a problem.” Read more on 24dash.

Council Will Take 18 Years to Rehouse Bedroom Tax Victims

A Lancashire council has warned it will take 18 years to rehouse people affected by the bedroom tax. A report presented to Preston Council’s cabinet set out the impact of welfare changes and suggested a strategy for coping with it. The report said there are currently 1,327 people in Preston affected by the bedroom tax. The total amount of benefit deductions in the town equates to nearly £1 million a year. The report also said tenant evictions for rent arrears may be necessary in the long term. It also said there has been an increase in demand for food banks. Westminster Council says it will take over five years to re-house all of its social housing tenants hit by the bedroom tax in smaller flats. Read more on Inside Housing.

Council Rehouses Just 28 of 440 Tenants Hit By Bedroom Tax

Just 28 of 440 social housing tenants hit by the bedroom tax in Westminster have been rehoused by the council.   Rent arrears owed by families in the London borough affected by the government's controversial under-occupancy policy have increased to over £34,000 - an increase of 17.6% since the end of March.  In Westminster, 371 tenants deemed to have one bedroom too many have had £18 a week cut from their housing benefit, whilst 72 tenants said to have two bedrooms or more too many have lost £34 a week. Read more on 24dash.

Downsizing Tenants Face 24-Year Wait For Homes

It would take 24 years to rehouse everyone hit by the bedroom tax in the east of England who needs a one bedroom home even if a third of those properties were set aside for them each year.  A report by Cambridge University’s Centre for Housing and Planning Research found it would still take eight years to rehouse all those under-occupying who need a one bedroom property if almost every vacant one bed home was allocated to them.  It would take the region’s councils almost 23 years to clear their waiting lists if they adopted this approach. The report concluded many tenants would ‘pay to stay’, spending an average of £14 a week, while awaiting a transfer.  A 24-year wait would cost them £17,472.  Read more on Inside Housing.

Council Tackles Bedroom Tax With Semantic Solution

Leeds council has come up with a novel way of sidestepping the controversial bedroom tax: reclassifying more than 800 "spare" rooms in its social homes as "non-specific rooms".  The creative wordplay means tenants in affected properties are not classed as underoccupying their homes and do not have to pay a surcharge as a result.   Councillor Peter Gruen said it would cost the council more to evict tenants and rehouse them than it would to simply accept that many could not pay for the underoccupation charge.  Council officials had inspected the housing stock and reclassified any unoccupied ground floor bedrooms as non-specific as well as very small bedrooms, or those which acted as a thoroughfare to another room. He said he hoped that all "fair-minded politicians" across the country would implement the same changes.

Read more on the Guardian website.

Councils Re-Housing Homeless Outside Home Boroughs

London councils are rapidly accelerating the re-housing of homeless households outside their home boroughs. In the year to April, 10,832 households were re-housed in this way – a 16% rise on the previous 12 months. Most left the more affluent districts of inner London for the cheaper outer suburbs, although an increasing number of London's homeless are being moved to towns outside the capital.  The "destination" boroughs have said the influx of households has put a significant strain on local services. Councillors in Enfield in outer London, where more properties and B&B rooms are secured by London authorities than anywhere else, have said the demand from inner London authorities is pushing up private rents and placing untenable pressure on school places.  "The pressure will not abate," said Edward Smith, a Conservative councillor in Enfield. "Before long we will have to build more secondary schools."  The Labour leader of Slough council, Robert Anderson, said: "If authorities put people in our area with complex needs, or even just families; they need to inform us. If we know where they have come from we can make sure the borough does not shirk responsibilities and just pass on their more difficult clients. You can't just pitch up halfway through a year and expect to get a school place. It's not McDonald's."  Read more on the Guardian website.

Housing Benefit Cuts Leading To Sharp Rise in Homelessness

Government cuts to housing benefit are causing more people in the private rented sector to become homeless and making it harder to rehouse people who are homeless, homeless charity Crisis has warned.  Private tenants are under pressure as a fifth of all households were accepted as homeless because of the end of an assured shorthold tenancy in the PRS, a 30% increase in the last year and 60% on two years ago. Crisis says this is a clear sign that the Government’s cuts to housing benefit are leaving private tenants unable to afford their current property.  Read more on 24dash.

Council 'Suspends' Long Distance Re-Housing Policy

An east London council has suspended its policy of re-housing families long distances away in favour of a more focused approach to support people hit by housing benefit cuts.  Waltham Forest Council - which has already re-housed 14 families in Luton and five in Margate - also recently acquired affordable accommodation in Walsall, 138 miles away.  However, according to the BBC, the council has now suspended the "problematic" policy after fewer than expected families took up the offer. It concluded that re-locating families as far afield as Walsall was a "step too far" and that it had been "largely rejected by residents".  The council - which currently has 21,000 people on its housing waiting list - is understood to now be "more rigorously" considering work, school and family ties and was also looking to join a consortium of London councils aimed at "re-assigning tenants back to their respective boroughs." Read more on the BBC website.

Plans to Move London's Homeless to Nottingham

DOZENS of homeless people could be relocated to Nottingham from London boroughs.  Westminster City Council is considering plans to move homeless housing benefit claimants to Nottingham and Derby, according to proposals by one of its private providers, Smart Housing Group (SHG). The group is proposing to rehouse 150 people within the next 12 or so months, but is suggesting this number be eventually increased to 500.  A spokeswoman for Westminster City Council said the authority was considering the plans as a "three-borough initiative", together with councils for Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham. Each authority is looking to rehouse 50 families.  However, the spokeswoman also said the option of extending the number to 500 was "not something the authority was looking into".   Read more on the Nottingham Post website.