Homelessness is a business

Tens of thousands of vulnerable people across the UK are being forced to live in unregulated housing that subject tenants to filthy conditions. Campaigners say the lack of oversight means vulnerable people, including domestic abuse victims, care leavers and refugees, are seen as “financial commodities” and placed in properties where there are no safeguards against exploitation by other residents or requirement to make sure they are safe and clean. They warned that the government was paying millions of pounds in housing benefit into a system that often “perpetuates” homelessness rather than works to solve it.

Figures show a recent surge in homeless people with nowhere else to turn being offered a form of shared supported housing known as “exempt accommodation”, which guarantees the owner full rent paid directly from each tenant’s benefits, with no official safeguards on standards or safety.

More than 27,500 people are living in exempt accommodation across seven UK cities alone – a figure that has surged by 92 per cent in just four years, as social housing and affordable private rented accommodation has become increasingly difficult to obtain, according to research by the Spring Housing Association charity.

Housing experts said this had led to a situation where supported accommodation was failing to provide its duty of care to residents, in some cases instead placing them in danger – living with other people with complex needs, and not receiving the support they need – as the provision becomes a “commercial activity” rather than a bid to solve homelessness. 

Dom Bradley, chief executive of Spring Housing, explained, “It’s a relatively new phenomenon. We have umbrella-style housing associations operating a model where they lease properties from private landlords and convert the properties for exempt accommodation. If you’re a landlord, you can get £600 a month for renting your property, or you can lease your property to a housing association and get on average £250 per tenant per week, and you don’t face the perceived administrative burden and delays from universal credit. The maths is phenomenal. It’s almost a no-brainer. And you charge the rents 100 per cent back to the DWP, so that rent is almost guaranteed. Homeless people are seen as financial commodities for this market."  Bradley warned that the tens of thousands of people living in exempt accommodation were not counted in the statistics, making them what he termed the 'hidden homeless'. “They aren’t the people you’re stepping over when you’re walking in town. It’s a sub-class that has arisen through the erosion of social housing and other housing options that were available if we look back 10 years,” he added.

Thea Raisbeck, the author of the report and a researcher at the University of Birmingham, said residents could find themselves in a “very damaging environment”, sometimes pushing them into forms of exploitation. We’ve had people who are recovering from substance misuse ending up in a house where everyone is drinking and taking drugs. There are often hierarchies that develop within this accommodation as well, and people can be exploited, be it through sexual exploitation or drug use.” Raisbeck said at a time when there has been “massive” cuts to funding in support for homeless people and drug and alcohol services, ministers were spending “multiple millions of pounds” on a form of accommodation that is “often perpetuating problems rather than solving them”.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/homeless-housing-crisis-renting-exempt-accommodation-report-a9186661.html