Council/housing association wait time for homeless?

[Maymoo99]

Can anyone around the derby/east midlands share there experiences or offer any advice on council housing waiting time?

I have become homeless in the last 6-7 weeks with my 21 months old toddler, currently sofa surfing in my disabled cousins which has been classified as severely overcrowded. The council has also set up a temporary pay-to-stay arrangement with my cousin to help with the costs of keeping me here. They have placed me in the highest band with a homeless need, severe overcrowding need and a minor medical need.

I have been bidding for the past 5-6 weeks and my bids have been positioning between 3-11 consistently. (Most properties have around 100 bids)

I cannot afford the upfront or ongoing costs of private rent as the average two bed around here is at least £800 per month and LHA only covers circa £450, and even if i could afford the demand for private rentals is very high with around 10-15 attending block viewings. I don’t stand a chance.

I suppose i’m just asking if anyone can share their experience and how long they’ve waited? I suppose at the least i’m just looking for some positive words.

Tia

@ThereIsNoTomorrow are you bidding yet etc x

I was given a no fault eviction by my landlord as he was selling the property (he didn’t he increased the rent by £450 a month instead!!) and I got a two bed flat a week before the eviction. 5 years later I was bidding on 3 bed homes.

Listened to my voice mail one day and had a call from the previous week from a withheld number offering me a viewing. Called them back, and they’d offered another couple a viewing as they couldn’t get into contact with me, but the couple could not be contacted
either.

Luckily enough I got the property. Been here 4 years now. Lovely area, lovely neighbours. Great location.

So my advice would be to keep an eye/ear out for any with held numbers! I almost lost out!

I hope you hear soon x

Somewhere where housing officers can't pull housing out of their arses? Honestly all this "pester them" stuff doesn't help.

It is a how long is a piece of string though, unfortunately.

There aren't spare social homes available pretty much everywhere in the country.

So home only come available when people move out, for whatever reason. Dying and vacating somewhere, or moving into private rented etc. This isn't a regular predictable process and therefore the council cannot tell you how long it will take.

The other alternative is to use your wages to rent somewhere privately. You could rent a small place

You don't need a two bed now so you could try at least getting a one bed privately

I'm in the SE, and I've had homeless clients spend a year or more in temporary accommodation. One couple were living in a studio flat with a baby for nearly 9 months. They only got a permanent home when their HV kicked up a stink and told the council that it was affecting the baby's development as there wasn't enough room for her to crawl and unsafe because they couldn't separate the cooking area from the living/sleeping space.

In some London boroughs, people spend years in TA.

The housing situation in this country is totally fucked, so fucked that I'm not even sure that a change of government will be able to improve it much. We need a massive programme of building social housing, rent controls and secure private sector tenancies.

Yet I have an empty two bedroom bungalow that I can’t let as it’s planning permission tied it to our house as dependent only and next door there is a perfectly good bungalow being left to go derelict with a planning permission none can afford to build 🤷‍♀️

That’s the thing, if i could access private rent i would. But it’s totally geared to make it hard for people on benefits/single mothers, extortionate rents, need of guarantor and references etc. I have tried relentlessly but can’t access it

Absolutely appreciate how difficult it is. Just trying to think of solutions.

I know in some areas council can provide deposit for private rented and help with the process, so could explore that.

And assume that you are trying at least to get the child maintenance you are owed

@LakieLady im in derby so although i am expecting a wait and have come to terms with it, i am expecting months rather than years. Coming so high on my bids at an early stage i cannot see how it can be more than 6-12 months

Even if councils did "give a shit" (and I believe most of them do), it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference.

They have a statutory duty to house homeless families, and single people who are vulnerable. In areas with a high level of homelessness (which is probably most areas), they have to place people wherever they can and can't turn down places that are less than ideal.

Where I live and work, homeless people are sometimes placed way out of area, sometimes 60+ miles away from their work, schools and families, because there is simply not enough temporary accommodation available. Two hotels that used to be used for homeless families have been sold and redeveloped into flats for people to buy. The nearest temporary accommodation for homeless people and families is now 18 miles away in the next district.

Councils are rarely allowed to borrow to buy or build homes and they aren't allowed to breach spending limits to lease them, so their hands are tied.

It’s not easy to get a permanent home from temp I was in temporary for 5 long years with my kids, longest time for the area I’m in. I do have 4 which is why when my landlord sold it was impossible as a single parent to get anything big enough to rent I could afford. The house I had was joint with my ex partner so affordability wasn’t an issue then.

I pestered them for my time there not that it made a jot of difference but am finally settled in a little 3 bed house in march. Still doesn’t feel like it’s forever, or that I can paint etc.

Societal shift means that in the early 1970’s only about 10% of households were classed as single occupancy that figure is now 33% occupied by a single adult person who may or may not have dependant children. This is all housing not just council. That societal shift is enormous but rarely talked about. It’s had a bigger impact than right to buy or immigration.

Yes, it's very positive that your bids are coming high on the priority list. If they work the same system as councils here do, when a number of people in the same priority band bid on the same property, they allocate it to the applicant that has been on the register the longest, so your chances of success increase over time.

It's also important to use up as many bids as you can each time (here you get 3 bids each time a new lot of properties are added, which is fortnightly).

I hope you get something soon. I know how dispiriting it is - it's one of the reasons I don't work in homelessness any more!

@Shopper727 where abouts are you located? Derby council now seem to be gearing away from temporary accommodation, as people that go into TA are awarded the middle banding which takes a lot longer due to less houses allocated to it and a lot lot more people being in the band.

Don't get me wrong I agree that there just aren't the properties and tbh it shocked me how many people in these hotels actually turned down flats/houses because of area or just not liking it. I would have taken anywhere I was offered to be out of that cesspit so can't understand those people. The only reason I'm now in ha flat is because it was on Rightmove and 10 miles away from where we were. Probably still would have been stuck in hotel otherwise

That's interesting, @TheBlueandtheGrey .

Do you happen to know if that's mainly because us old people are living longer, or because there are more single parent families?

I sometimes get mildly cross with MIL, who has been living alone in a lovely 2-bed council house for 17 years, and for nearly 40 years prior to that it was just her and her husband. Part of me thinks she should downsize and free up the house for a family, but then I think how it would break her heart to leave the garden that is her life's work and gives her endless pleasure.

Even if the council had the power to make her move, it would be futile because the 2 of her kids who are very rich would just pay for her to buy it under right to buy, and then it would never be a council house again.

I can't speak for every council, obvs, but in this county and the neighbouring city, the councils consider that they have discharged their duty under homelessness law when they have offered a property that they deem suitable (they're not unreasonable about what's "suitable", to be fair).

That applicant then loses their "statutorily homeless" status and they no longer have to provide them with temporary accommodation, but they can remain on the housing register. They did it to some clients of mine a few years ago, and the family had to move in with her sister for a few months before they got another offer through bidding.

@LakieLady i agree there needs to be regulation of under occupation.

@LakieLady same for my LA. Once duty accepted and homeless band or TA awarded you have to bid every week on any eligible property. You might want a house but if a flat was advertised that met your needs you have to bid and if you don't your housing officer will do it on your behalf. If you refuse to accept a property offered then duty is discharged and you no longer have the priority banding.

@Maymoo99 yeah I'm bidding every week but unfortunately our housing doesnt even tell us our position, even if you ring them they are unable to give that information out 🙄

@ThereIsNoTomorrow thats not right. They shouldn’t withhold that. I would ask again and say if they don’t inform you then you will be doing a FOI request

@Mamofteenager i have no issue bidding on all properties. I have no right to be fussy.

There is an article on the BBC news site at the moment about how much councils are paying to house people in temp accommodation, and that some councils are facing bankruptcy because its becoming unaffordable for them too.

My HA does huge amounts of building, we are trying to target the highest need areas (currently London) but its still slow going. It costs a huge amount of money to build, and as HAs are not for profit they rely on grants and the income from selling properties. Which means they also need to build a large number of homes for sale. It really is a fine line juggling act.

Homelessness is a massive issue. There are vast amounts of single people homeless, and families are now facing it more often than ever as CoL prices them out of private renting. Our average wait for a 3 bed property is 8-10 years which most families need that size property.

Believe it or not, no council or HA finds pleasure in people being in shitty housing situations. They're not there laughing at folks desperation. We would love to adequately house everyone on our lists, in properties they feel happy in. But there simply is not enough properties and it's a constant juggling act! I have customers in dire need of a move, and I do mean DIRE and I just cannot find them a property!

We need huge housing projects, but every attempt to build social housing on a large scale also faces a lot of push back from communities who don't want social housing in their back yard.