Every year since 2011, the charity Crisis has published The Homelessness Monitor – an independent study of the impacts of economic and political developments on homelessness. The report can make for some chilling reading. One trend highlighted in this year’s report was concern from Local Authorities that Housing Associations were undermining efforts to reduce homelessness by turning away homeless people put up for social housing because they might be too poor to pay.
In a summary of the Key Findings of the report, Crisis said:
“Very few local authority respondents believed that existing social housing provision in their area is commensurate with homelessness needs, but many were at least equally concerned about the problematic profile of the local social housing stock portfolio, mismatched to need. There were also widespread anxieties about ongoing changes to housing association tenancy allocation policies impeding local authorities’ ability to resolve homelessness.”
What’s going on here?
In many areas, housing associations (also known as Registered Social landlords or Private registered Providers of Social Housing) are the main providers of social housing. The 1985 and 1988 Housing Acts positively encouraged the transfer of council-owned housing stock to housing associations. Without the severe constraints faced by public sector borrowing, housing associations were able to borrow money to build social housing.
Housing associations are not-for-profit entities (some are charities or companies, others are trusts, co-operatives or industrial and providential societies). However, the findings in the Crisis report have led some to accuse housing associations of being too focussed on their property portfolios to the detriment of their legal obligations to reduce homelessness.
Since the outset, the rollout of the government’s flagship welfare reform – Universal Credit – has been widely blamed for pushing the poorest tenants into rent arrears. Housing associations argue that they are protecting themselves and their current tenants by refusing to take on more tenants that could add to the financial risk.
What else can be done?
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