Noone's picked up on supported accomodation tenants paying £800pm utilities/broadband on a 4 bed house with 5 tenants. Does anyone else think this is extortionate and the landlord is making a profit?
Yes this is extortionate and yes the landlord must be making a huge profit.
I've been reading about the 'exempt' supported housing sector and it's the worst example of public money being syphoned off for private profit I have ever seen.
There are two sorts - specialist supported housing provides long term care, equivalent to a care home, and is for people who are not able to live independently.
Bog standard supported housing is for people who need a low level of support and are moving towards independence. For example, women escaping domestic abuse, refugees leaving asylum accommodation, people with mental health issues, people with addictions, people coming out of prison, care leavers, people who struggle to hold onto a tenancy for various, sometimes complex reasons etc.
Both types use roughly the same business model but specialist supported housing is much better regulated. Both types are exempt from the housing benefit LHA cap.
There is a new type of housing association that doesn't own any property (or hardly any) but instead leases it all from the private sector and rents it all out as supported housing.
Private landlords cannot on their own provide supported housing because unlike HAs they are not Registered Providers of social housing. By leasing their properties to HAs as supported housing they can reap much greater rewards by renting rooms individually at rates far, far higher than LHA. Not all are individual landlords with one or two properties, some are huge companies or real estate investment trusts that own hundreds or thousands of properties. Typically these are ordinary houses with up to 6 single people sharing a bathroom, toilet and kitchen.
Bog standard supported housing providers are expected to provide care, support or supervision that is ‘more than minimal’ or ‘more than trifling’ but is not further defined. The additional housing benefit is not intended to fund anybody's care package - that is funded by social services.
Bog standard is not commissioned by the local authority so there is no oversight of safeguarding, staffing levels and suitability, aims and outcomes, the suitability of any placement for any particular individual, or whether there is actually any care, support or supervision in place.
Because the properties are under the umbrella of a HA they are also exempt from the usual requirement to get an HMO licence.
The vast majority of people living in this type of accommodation are licensees rather than Assured Shorthold Tenants. They have very few housing rights and can be evicted very quickly and easily. They find it difficult to complain.
Referrals come from a wide range of agencies and sometimes also self-referrals. There is seldom a formal process, specific criteria or assessment for suitability. Referrals tend to be 'crisis' - agencies simply ring or email round to find somewhere available for their client that night.
Some highly dangerous and unsuitable placements have been reported, including women escaping domestic abuse being housed with violent men who have just been released from prison, and people who have just been released from rehab being sent to live in a house full of heavy drug users. Residents have no choice who they share their home with and if a room becomes empty they have no idea who they will be sharing with tomorrow.
In the absence of adequate supervision, a house full of vulnerable people becomes a magnet for drug dealers to base their operations. Some residents report not knowing which of the many people passing through the house actually live there.
The business model relies on every renter being entitled to full housing benefit so if someone gets a job that is a massive problem. Most of the time if that happens they will be evicted and because they are licencees they will get very little notice. If they are not evicted then, even if they are still entitled to some HB, they will struggle tremendously to meet the rent because it's so very high. So this housing model heavily disincentivises people from moving into employment. Anything that messes up their 100% housing benefit claim, even temporarily, is likely to leave them with massive rent arrears very quickly. So people become trapped and find it very difficult to move on to somewhere more settled and safer, even it were available.
This is worth a listen: soundcloud.com/insidehousing/exempt-accommodation
The report they're talking about is here: springhousing.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Spring-Housing-Final-Report-A4.pdf