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.

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"!

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?

When idiots collide

It appears that our head idiot recently met with the other head idiots of surrounding boroughs and has come back with a new proposal, well actually it is now unwritten policy.
From now on when we are presented with a client who is fleeing domestic violence then we should seek to place them in a refuge rather than take a homelessness application. To quote from a briefing that we had today "Its not just about reducing homelessness applications, but making sure they are safe"

Well excuse me but making people who may have suffered possibly the most traumatic period of their lives having to move miles away from the support of their friends or family how is that helping them? I know that the refuge's do a superb job in helping victims of domestic violence, but they can't do it on their own!

Well I'm back and am venting!!!!!!!!!!

It seems to me that the push for offering "Options" to clients who are threatened with homeless or are actually homeless means that they are basically being mislead, misinformed or even in some cases actually lied to! I'm sorry I recognise that offering "Options" can be a good thing, but not if local authorities are lying to people. Only recently in my work place I was passed a case from our prevention and option team they had been dealing with the case for a number of months but had only now passed it for a Part VII assessment because the applicant had had contacted a solicitor who had written in asking why no decision had been made, the Options staffed wrote back and lied stating that a Part VII application had been taken 3 months ago, but a decision would be made in the next 7 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would say to anyone who represents clients in respect of homelessness applications to ask for a copy of the clients file and check when the client approached the Authority and when the Authority officially took a homelessness application. Willing to bet you'll find many cases where the duty to investigate under Part VII was triggered but was ignored!

Frustration with the Emperors New Clothes

As a homelessness officer I'm fed up up of hearing all the priority being put on prevention. I find some of the tactics used to make people move into privately rented property dubious to say the least, even illegal at times. Senior management and central government are only worried about figures and don't consider the service users at all. I know of clients that have attended our office requesting to make a homelessness application but they have been fobbed off for months and months whilst privately rented accommodation is sought for them, then the case is passed over once the clients legal representatives start acting for them