Just a follow up to my previous post

If you see my post below Mark Easton of the BBC in his post entitled "Homelessness crisis? What homelessness crisis?"stated that:
"Even so, it seems odd that England has apparently escaped the kind of scenes being witnessed in America: tented villages of homeless people; motels requisitioned to house the destitute."
Well as I was spending my Saturday afternoon doing some work from home I came across this article from the Midweek Herald, a paper that is based in the South West of England. This article is about homeless people who are sleeping in tents because they have nowhere else to go.

A myopic viewpoint

I have just received an email pointing out an article on the BBC website by Mark Easton. The article is titled "Map of the Week: Homelessness crisis? What homelessness crisis?". It appears that Mr Easton has seen the government statistics (our old friends the infamous P1e's) and on the basis of these has not questioned the truth behind them but has just followed them blindly. I hope to correct some of his observations here.

Homelessness is not falling, what is happening is that councils are doing all they can to prevent people from making homelessness applications thats all. People are still becoming homeless, but all that now happens is that they are being forced into accepting rent deposit scheme properties or other housing option schemes, but of course this is what is wanted by central government because they do not count towards the homeless statistics. The fact that a local authority believes that the applicant meets sufficient of the homelessness legislation to place them via an "option" and pay out deposits on this case doesn't matter, all that matters is that the statistics go down. Of course the criteria that local authority uses before issuing an "Option" is if the applicant is eligible, homeless, priority need not intentionally homeless and has a local connection precisely the same criteria as the homelessness legislation. As I have mentioned previously on my blog, that in many councils "Gatekeeping" is at the best tolerated and at the very worst actively encouraged by management.

The view that Mr Easton gave in his article:
"Look at the main reason people gave for finding themselves without a roof over their head: 38% said it was because parents, relatives or friends were unable or unwilling to accommodate them.
It is far from ideal, but perhaps families are putting up with surplus children and grandchildren because they know how frightening it is to be homeless in a recession."
Well if councils were following the letter of the law and accommodating those people who were homeless and met the homelessness criteria then there shouldn't be a need for families to live in overcrowded situations. Also its quite easy to speak to the parents and advise them its better to keep young Pete or Katie at home for a few weeks until an option property becomes available rather than having them going into bed and breakfast accommodation. Councils will turn a blind eye to issues that the property is not suitable accommodation due to overcrowding as long as it prevents a homelessness application being taken. Of course had a family been accepted as homeless and was asked to remain at their friends or family's property until temporary accommodation was found that would be illegal, but as its a "prevention" case they are asked to remain in there.

In respect of the apparent reduction of those people in temporary accommodation, let me outline how this is being done. How homeless people, particularly those with children can be gently nudged, even coerced, into giving up their temporary accommodation and having the homelessness duty discharged on their cases. An example of this would be a family who have been residing in the same temporary accommodation for a few years. Now the lease of the property may becoming to an end or the council wants to hand the property back for some other reason. The homeless applicant will be notified that they will have to leave this property in the near future. Now pay attention out there and watch what happens when the family are interviewed:

"Hello Mr Jones thanks for coming into the office. As you aware the lease is coming to an end on your property, we can look for alternative temporary accommodation for you, but this may be some miles away and I'm aware that your children attend school close to where you live. What I would recommend is that you go on our option scheme so that you can remain in this area. You don't want to go go to all the bother of finding a new doctor or school when you can stay in this area on the option scheme.Yes we do close your homelessness case but on our permanent housing list you'll be treated the same as if you was in temporary accommodation, even though your a private rented tenant".

Surprise surprise those people who have children at school, or are worried about being too far from their health professionals or friends and family will jump at the Option scheme. I accept that some homelessness applicants are happy to move into Option scheme accommodation but they are not all being given the full picture all that matters is reducing the number of temporary accommodation properties.

Something is seriously amiss!

I noticed today when I accessed my work emails that we were sent the last quarters (October - December 2008) P1e returns, for those who are unaware of what the P1e's are, they are the returns that Local Authorities supply to central government in respect of homelessness applications. Now I'm really really certain that The Court of Appeal was very lucid in respect of "homeless at home" in Birmingham City Council v Aweys & Ors [2008] EWCA Civ 48. So imagine my surprise to see upon in the P1es the column listing those people who have had a duty accepted to them but are "Homeless at Home" awaiting accommodation, 6,070!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now bearing in mind there are 67,480 accepted cases in temporary accommodation this means there are nearly 10% of all accepted cases are "Homeless at Home".

Furthermore I noticed that in England 26,350 decisions were made in total, but having then deducted the not homeless decisions, the non-priority decisions and the intentionally homeless decisions the full housing duty was accepted in 12,070 cases but there is no mention in the returns of any decisions where applicants were found not to be eligible. Does anyone have any idea what happened to these decisions? Did they slip down the back of the filing cabinet?

So according to the statistics 12,070 cases had the full housing duty accepted in the quarter, but 6,070 are listed as "Homeless at Home"!

Help......am I going mad?

As I had a day off today I've been wasting my day online off and on. I came across a blog on this site about a homeless family who have a full housing duty accepted to them by their Local Authority, but was astounded to read this:

The Council have just written to us to inform us that they agree we are homeless and we now have 3 months before we can bid on a Council House.When you start bidding you can bid on 2 properties, twice a month for two months and if you are not awarded a property during this period you are allocated one by the Council, you have no choice, which could be anywhere in the Epping Forest.

I asked the author of the blog if they had been advised of the reason for the 3 month delay and was stunned when I received the following in reply "Thank you for your question. We asked the same question at the time and were told it was to allow smoothly running of the system as they don't have a great amount of house stock in the area.
So, once you are in the Shelter you technically have a roof over your head and therefore you can wait 3 months before going into band 1."

Seems that the Local Authority is using their waiting list to try to force people into other housing options in my opinion

Two sides of the coin?

I came across this story online today. A family have been offered temporary accommodation by the London Borough of Barnet, which is a flat on the 9th floor of a tower block. The applicant, Mrs Poojara, has stated that the offer is unsuitable as her children are scared of heights following a friend of theirs who died after falling from a tall building. The council has said the offer is suitable having considered the information available to them.
The part of the story that caught my attention was that the family GP had written in support of the family. I appreciate that GP's try to help their patients but unless there is a medical condition then it is merely their opinion. I have lost count of the times that suddenly an applicant states that they suffer from vertigo when they have been offered high rise accommodation.

Gatekeeping

Well I thought I'd mention gatekeeping as I noted that Mr Flack had mentioned it in a comment on this blog today. For those of you who are unclear what I we mean when we say "gatekeeping", I quote from the Shelter website who sum it up in a nutshell, "Gatekeeping is the name generally given where a council refuses to accept a homelessness application and/or provide interim accommodation where they have a duty to do so."
Whilst every council I know will deny that they gatekeep, in my experience all councils gatekeep to keep their homelessness applications down. This gatekeeping approach has always existed to a certain extent since I have worked in homelessness, but has now grown to be the norm in all cases rather than the odd case. The law is being broken on a daily basis across the country and unless you are an applicant who is aware of what the legislation says or have sought independent advice you will be a victim of this!

I was going to give examples of where I have personal knowledge of this, but whilst drafting this post I came across a number of articles online from the past few years and somehow think that you, dear reader, will be able to look through them and decide if a blind eye is being turned to this issue by government rather than having me tell you my view of it. I've placed the links below in a roughly chronological order:

13th June 2005 BBC website report on the falling homelessness figures and SHELTERS comments on them

12th April 2006 Letter from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, who then gad the responsibility for housing matters, to all Local Authorities regarding "Gatekeeping" and comment from Homelessness Link on the letter

31st August 2008 Article in the Observer newspaper

22th March 2009 Inside Housing reports on the fall on on homelessness applications

So who thinks that Gatekeeping is going on?

Too much chocolate

has had me surfing the internet on on hyperdrive. I note that the issues about the Local Housing Allowance, that many of us have seen coming, are starting to raise concerns according to a article on the BBC website. Many clients that I have seen want the rent paid direct to the landlord, but of course they can't. Also Inside Housing has a similar article, how landlords are stopping renting to those on benefit due to LHA.
Again another piece of government action that hasn't been thought through and doesn't help clients.
No doubt I'll start seeing cases where clients are evicted as they have spent the rent money

And just to add a further thing to say this legislation is not well thought out read this story, about a man who will have to move out of the room he has lived in for 6 years because LHA doesn't cover the rent of his room but he can have a one bedroom flat at a rent up to £640!