Homeless Dilemma. Help.

lighting_up_the_chalice

sheramber wrote: »

On a recent televison programme a mother with two young children from London was evicted. The council put her in B&B in Worthing.

She lost her job as well as her house, as she was now too far away to travel to it.

Some London authorities are renting properties to use as temporary accommodation for homeless families as far away as Birmingham and Peterborough.

NYM

If you have links to a particular area wouldn't they take that into consideration though ?

lighting_up_the_chalice

NYM wrote: »

If you have links to a particular area wouldn't they take that into consideration though ?

For temporary accommodation, no. For permanent discharge of the homeless duty, they should be looking in their own LA area. But they can only offer what they have. If they have 1,000 homeless families and 10 available homes..... well..... you can guess the rest.

If you are homeless in a high demand area, it is probably wise to prepare for a long wait for an offer of either SH or private rent in a low demand area which no-one else will accept. If you refuse, the duty ends and they can offer the same property to another family owed the homeless duty. By offering people the housing dregs, they are likely to discharge more than one duty per property, so it's win/win for the LA. Harsh, but a necessary evil.

BigAunty

NYM wrote: »

If you have links to a particular area wouldn't they take that into consideration though ?

AFAIK, local connection is just about whether or not the council have a duty to accept the homeless application - they don't want people moving to a new area and calling themselves homeless from the start. Its not a restriction on where they can place them.

I wonder whether the Localism Act of a few years ago gave councils permission to house their homeless in areas other than the council area. It seems to coincide with the rise of London councils sending applicants away but I'm not sure if it is specifically tied with that policy change.

That piece of legislation was the one that killed dead in England the right for priority homeless people to be given social housing. Instead, a council in England can now discharge it's responsibility by offering the homeless a year tenancy in 'suitable' accommodation and I don't believe there is now any explicit rule that obliges it to be local. I could be wrong. I'm not aware if any homeless people have successfully challenged being offered accommodation miles away from their current area.

The removal of the council obligation to offer social housing was a realistic one - it's a very scarce resource and councils could not keep up with demand because every household with children could present themselves as homeless when a landlord serves notice.

I think it also led to bottlenecks in B&Bs and hostels because the tenants were more likely to stick out the poor interim accommodation and not motivated to find private tenancies knowing that even if it took months or more, the council was legally obliged to allocate them social housing in the end.

I think it got to the stage where in some areas, more were accepted as homeless than could ever be realistically rehoused in social housing, the vacant properties were so few.

Rollingstart

MissMoneypenny wrote: »

The OP said she works as a teaching assistant in a school. Before Tax Credits were invented, TAs were usually part time jobs for mothers who had a partner who worked full time, as a bit of extra money for the household pot.



There are lots of mothers who would like a TA job to fit around their children. If the OP moves out to a cheaper rental area, the position won't be hard to fill.

People who can't afford to live in London but earn too much to claim HB, commute to work. The trains are full of thousands of commuters travelling to and from work in London. Housing Benefit has helped to keep London's rents high.

Most of Greater London is expensive.

Your reasoning is a bit off, what is London supposed to be, a city where mothers cannot live?

Commuting from outside greater London certainly ain't cheap too. A season ticket from Woking to central London is about three and a half thousand quid last time I checked.

As for the argument that housing benefit drives up rents, in some areas yes but not London. The main thing driving the high cost of rent in London is house price inflation. Moreover, if housing benefit had such a huge impact on rent levels, following the benefits cap, we'd have seen a fall in rents in London by now but in fact rents have been going up.

lighting_up_the_chalice

Rollingstart wrote: »

As for the argument that housing benefit drives up rents, in some areas yes but not London. The main thing driving the high cost of rent in London is house price inflation. Moreover, if housing benefit had such a huge impact on rent levels, following the benefits cap, we'd have seen a fall in rents in London by now but in fact rents have been going up.

The reason for high rents in London is two fold. High wages and high demand. Address either (or both) of those and rents will fall. Making rent less affordable for those reliant on HB would at least address demand as more people realised that they simply cannot afford to live in London if they expect the state to pay their rent.

[Deleted User]

One thing that I don't understand:
I know that now the council are allowed to offer accommodation in the private sector to people in the homelessness queue…
Who are those private landlords who will accept homeless people directed by the council and how much is going to be their rent? LHA is capped so I can't see how is this going to solve the problem?
Perhaps all the non-working homeless families will be offered social housing and the working ones will be offered private sector accommodation.

Rollingstart

Out of interest, has your landlord protected your deposit? If no, don't let onto him that it needs to be protected and let matters take their course.

bloolagoon

Deleted_User wrote: »

One thing that I don't understand:
I know that now the council are allowed to offer accommodation in the private sector to people in the homelessness queue…
Who are those private landlords who will accept homeless people directed by the council and how much is going to be their rent? LHA is capped so I can't see how is this going to solve the problem?
Perhaps all the non-working homeless families will be offered social housing and the working ones will be offered private sector accommodation.

Not necessarily in the same borough. £100 over LHA is very reasonable for your area. I paid £1600 per month (no hb) when I lived in london, it's one reason I moved. Decent properties around the LHA are hard to come by. Social housing can be even harder.

[Deleted User]

Rollingstart wrote: »

Out of interest, has your landlord protected your deposit? If no, don't let onto him that it needs to be protected and let matters take their course.

No he hasn't. He returned the deposit in full otherwise he wouldn't be able to serve me a valid S21 notice.