This update is aimed at those with a role in preventing or tackling homelessness, giving you news about the role of the team, examples from a range of organisations and other useful information. We want you to contribute so please send information to hatenquiries@housingcorp.gsx.gov.uk

Housing offenders

When you are writing your Homelessness Action Plan, you will no doubt consider the needs of vulnerable clients including those of offenders and those are at risk of offending.

Finding suitable accommodation on release from prison is a vital element of the steps needed to reduce the chances of an offender reoffending.

• One third of prisoners losing their housing whilst in custody;
• Prisoners who have housing arranged on release are four times more likely to have employment, education or training than those who do not have housing in place;
• 75% of those offenders most likely to re-offend were found to have a housing need compared to 30% for the general offender population.

The Housing Corporation’s Regulatory Code expects housing associations to work with local authorities to enable them to fulfil their duties to, amongst others, “the vulnerable and those covered by the Government’s Supporting People policy.”

The Housing Corporation’s Homelessness Strategy also suggests that Homelessness Action Plans should include measures to tackle homelessness among client groups that do not easily fit within established arrangements such as … ex offenders”.

To help you to think through some of these issues, the HAT Homelessness Toolkit contains useful questions about offenders to be considered when producing your homelessness action plan. However it is also important to ensure you have arrangements in place to deal with the situation if one of your tenants goes into prison particularly those that receive sentences of less than 12 months.

These arrangements can avoid the build up of arrears, possible eviction, assumed abandonment, and with this, the loss of personal belongings.

Under Housing Benefit (HB) rules, prisoners who rent their accommodation can continue their HB claim while they are in custody, where the absence is unlikely to exceed 13 weeks ( for sentenced prisoners) or 52 weeks (for remand prisoners). The prisoner must intend to return to the property.

This means that anyone sentenced to 26 weeks or less (as they will likely be released halfway through their sentence) can maintain an existing HB claim. 

There are a number of other practical ways to protect the tenancies of prisoners who are serving longer tenancies, such as transferring HB claims to others who reside at the property. Tenants may also be able to negotiate reduced payments to keep arrears to a minimum, with an agreement to pay off the arrears following release.

It is important that you find out quickly when one of your tenants is sentenced so you can agree the appropriate action. Establishing links with probation and prison services can help in this communication.

The London Borough of Waltham Forest has developed a scheme in conjunction with the ALMO and housing associations in the borough, allowing people who go into prison to relinquish their tenancy and guaranteeing them an offer of accommodation on release.

While it is unable to guarantee an absolute ‘like-for-like’ tenancy, suitable housing in line with the prisoner’s needs and risk will be offered

As the Housing Needs of offenders are currently attracting more attention, a number of partnerships have been established across the country, such as the South West Accommodation Gateway (SWAG) and the Housing and Returning Prisoners Protocol (HARP) in the North East, with the aim of finding housing solutions. Joint working with housing associations is vital if their aims are to be achieved. Contact the HAT team if you would like more information about these.

Employment

Finding employment is another difficult task for prisoners on their release. Some housing associations have schemes which enable offenders to volunteer, train and find employment. Shepherds Bush Housing Group provide volunteering opportunities for offenders as part of their staying put services and also provide employment opportunities. In their joint sub-regional Homelessness Strategy, the Norfolk RSL Alliance has committed to the development of “employability initiatives” specifically aimed at offenders.

We are keen to hear of other examples of housing associations working with offenders as we have not come across many examples on our travels.

Area based plans

We are now working with three London Boroughs and the South West London sub region on area based homelessness action plans. The premise is simple, identify what homes and services are available within the local authority area, agree who is receiving what in terms of products and services, do some analysis and make some decisions about how to make best use of available resources. As with so much of our work, the devil is in the detail! 

Stage one is to reach a common understanding of who is gaining access to social lettings (including local authority and housing association sponsored private renting schemes), how many lettings could be made available over the period of the Area Homelessness Plan and how these should be distributed to get the most from the local housing market. 

As with individual housing association Homelessness Action Plans local authority based plans will encompass housing options, tenancy sustainment, homeless prevention and other activities which contribute to the most efficient use of local housing resources.

Partnership working, predominantly between your organisation and the local authority is key. Other stakeholders will be key but the relationship between local authority and associations is critical.

What do we hope to achieve from the area based approach?

More fairness and transparency in the lettings process, a clearer and common understanding of who is being housed, better targeting of scarce resources and more efficient processes. An ambitious agenda!  However, we are practical about this, the first step will be to agree definitions, gather data, do the analysis and then agree what works well and what can be improved. Real partnership and real dialogue will be the key.

If you want to know more about this project or feel there is scope to develop something similar in your locality please contact any of the team.

Evictions from supported housing

When we work with housing associations we will discuss how they may reduce their number of evictions. This tends to concentrate on good housing management of general needs tenancies. We are increasingly highlighting that there can be issues around the number of evictions from supported housing and hostel accommodation. Currently, around 33% of those leaving hostels do so as a result of eviction or abandonment.
It will be expected that there will be higher rates of evictions from such accommodation but some organisations have made a real impact on reducing turnover, helping to break the cycle of homelessness of residents.

We want to hear more from you on the issues that you face and how you may have tried to address this issue. However, here are some of our tips at this stage:

• Know your data. A good analysis of the levels of evictions and the reasons can provide a good indicator of where your service may need to improve. Comparisons with other similar services can be especially valuable.
• You need to ensure that you are receiving appropriate referrals to your service. If the people you are housing have greater needs than you can respond to then there will be higher levels of evictions. If there is a mismatch you need to be collecting the evidence and talking to your funders and those that refer to you.
• Are you getting all the information you need with referrals so you can properly identify their need for advice and support? If not, you are setting people up to fail. 
• Get involved in any move-on strategy for your area. Moving people on to appropriate housing at the right time can help to reduce evictions.

We are keen to stimulate the debate on what works on reducing evictions from supported housing so please send us your views or examples of approaches that have been successful.

Enhanced housing options

The Housing Minister, Caroline Flint, has announced a programme of funding for 15 trailblazer enhanced housing options services. Local authorities are being asked to bid to develop housing options services that provide a much wider range of advice across all tenures and that tackle linked issues such  worklessness. This is hot off the press so more information in the next HAT update.

Events

These are some of the events being organised that may be of interest to those working around homelessness. If you know of future events please let us know so we can include them.

CLG Homelessness Summits aimed at local authorities
Brighton, 27th March 2008
Milton Keynes, 31st March 2008
London, 25th June 2008

Homeless Link – Making the extraordinary ordinary
Employing service users in the homelessness sector
London, 1st April 2008

Homeless Link – Joining the dots
Bringing together the evidence base for homelessness related policy and practice
London, 15th May 2008

NHF Housing Care & Support Conference
Coventry, 3rd & 4th July 2008

Contact us

We ask for your input in a number of ways. If you can help us or if you would like us to meet with you please contact us.

Mark Meehan
mark.meehan@housingcorp.gsx.gov.uk
07721 375104

Gerald Wild 
gerald.wild@housingcorp.gsx.gov.uk 
07971 667119

Madeleine Jeffery 
madeleine.jeffery@housingcorp.gsx.gov.uk 
07798 588752

Nick Sedgwick 
nick.sedgwick@housingcorp.gsx.gov.uk 
07919 394910

Dave Anteh 
dave.anteh@housingcorp.gsx.gov.uk 
07920 781254