By Francesca Albanese, Crisis
There’s critical shortage of social housing across the UK. This is most acute in England where we’re losing more homes for social rent than we’re building. Last year we saw a net loss of nearly 4,000 social rented homes against a backdrop of rising homelessness. There are record levels of households trapped in temporary accommodation and rough sleeping continues to rise, trends which are driven by a shortage of genuinely affordable homes.
Given the current shortfall in supply, how we distribute the available social homes has never been more important. Recent research by Crisis conducted with Heriot-Watt University and the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence has further shone a light on current housing association allocations practices.
The research shows the huge pressures the housing system is under, particularly for households on low incomes and landlords delivering homes at social rent. Facing inadequate overall supply, housing associations likened managing and prioritising access to social housing to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Almost three-quarters (71%) of responding housing associations in England felt that they faced a challenge of available properties not matching demand from applicants under the current choice-based lettings system. Some felt the scale of housing need in their area was so overwhelming that they were no longer sure that an allocations system could “meaningfully prioritise” between applicants.
The research demonstrated the difficulties people on the lowest incomes face in accessing social housing, as housing associations are forced to exclude applicants on the basis of their income. Around a third of responding English housing associations said that pre-tenancy affordability checks often brought to light new information which led to an offer of housing being deemed unsuitable for an applicant. Nearly a quarter of responding housing associations (24%) also said that households below a certain income threshold are sometimes excluded from the housing register from which they receive applications for social housing lettings.
The result is that some applicants aren’t considered for a social home due to fears the offer is unsuitable and they won’t be able to sustain tenancies due to low incomes or insecure finances. But there are very few options for people if they cannot access social homes and that puts extra pressure on the ever-increasing temporary accommodation bill.
We know there are huge challenges facing the housing association sector. The ongoing impact of welfare reform was a significant contributing factor in making these decisions. Restrictions to housing benefit and the benefit cap meant housing associations have needed to conduct more affordability checks. The reduction in availability of in-tenancy support has also made it harder to address support needs and tenancy sustainment.
Compounding these concerns is rises in land and building costs alongside trying to bring existing stock up to new efficiency standards.
But there are areas of good practice that show what can be achieved. Where common allocations policies and/or a common housing register existed across local authorities and social landlords there were more efficient ways to allocate homes. Further, a Scottish-style system could significantly improve allocations to homeless households. While a quarter of English housing associations reported often refusing nominations from the local authority because the offer was ‘unsuitable’, this was reported by only 6% of Scottish housing associations.
A key difference between England and Scotland is the mandatory nature of ‘Section 5’ nominations, which requires Scottish housing associations to rehouse statutorily homeless households referred to them by local authorities within a “reasonable period” unless they have a “good reason” not to do so. The recently published National Plan to End Homelessness is considering all levers to require social landlords to rehouse homeless households “including legislating if necessary”. This could make a large difference to accessing homes now.
Whilst there remain structural factors that must be tackled – more investment and minimum targets for social rent homes and tackling the welfare deficit – we must ensure the very system that was set up to help people most in need doesn’t continue to exclude people facing homelessness.
The research was conducted with Ben Sanders, Suzanne Fitzpatrick, Michael Allard and Garrett Grainger
