Housing homeless people in strong and prosperous communities

1
Housing homeless people in strong and
prosperous communities

• Nicholas Pleace
• Centre for Housing Policy
• www.york.ac.uk/chp/

2
Strong and prosperous communities

• Social rented sector in England increasingly
  being managed by third sector housing
  associations
• An emphasis on developing mixed and strong
  communities in social housing
• minimising spatial concentrations of poverty
• to avoid cultures of worklessness
• to promote opportunity/ minimise social problems

3
Housing the homeless

• Housing associations are expected, though not
  required, to take an active role in housing
  statutorily homeless households
• These households are characterised by
  socioeconomic marginalisation
• And in some cases have characteristics that make
  them difficult to manage

4
Fears of a policy tension

• Government became increasingly concerned that
  housing associations were avoiding management
  problems
• And pursuing goal of mixed, strong communities
• By excluding some homeless groups from their
  housing

5
The research

• Review and comparison of national level datasets
• Web-based survey of all local authorities which
  administer homelessness system
• Web-based survey of housing associations
• Detailed case study work in London, Birmingham,
  Bristol, Liverpool, Norfolk and Hertfordshire

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Findings Statistics

• Housing associations housed around one third of
  all statutorily homeless households
• Particularly active in areas where they manage
  what was local authority stock
• But considerable proportional variation in
  housing association activity
• between similar areas
• between similar associations

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Findings Statistics

• Suggested discrepancy, inconsistency
• Which in turn suggested bias from some housing
  associations
• Variation not explained by
• Level of homelessness
• Size and nature of housing associations or
  housing association sector
• Pools of homeless households in temporary
  accommodation

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Findings Survey

• Local authorities and housing associations both
  said that housing associations were less likely
  to house following groups
• People with history of anti-social behaviour
• Or poor tenancy records
• Unmet support needs
• Criminal records
• Current unemployment (smaller numbers)

9
Findings Fieldwork

• Housing association and local authority
  respondents talked openly of tension between
  providing housing to homeless people
• And maintaining mixed and strong communities

10
Findings Fieldwork

• Single people households, especially male, as
  there is almost always a problem there must be
  for them to be accepted as homeless in the first
  place (housing association respondent)

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Findings Fieldwork

• I know that the politics are with a big and small
  p here, but if you start putting people in one
  area because theyre hard to let then that is not
  the way to deal with homeless people. Its a case
  then of disturbing the community, you need a
  balanced community. If we are getting
  homelessness applicants all the time through the
  nominations and if we have only a small estate in
  an area, it will gradually fill up with those
  people and become difficult to manage, difficult
  and expensive to maintain and in effect its not
  what social housing is about. Its about giving
  people decent homes not just pushing them into
  places where they dont want to go and dont want
  to stay (housing association respondent).

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Conclusions

• Housing associations could not reconcile housing
  statutorily homeless households with pursuit of
  mixed communities
• Wanted cohesive, quiet communities that were
  easily managed
• As did their tenants
• They were excluding homeless people on this basis

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Conclusions

• But problem not straightforward
• Clearly housing associations have to have these
  concerns
• There are worries about spatial concentration of
  poverty and high cost, high risk populations

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Conclusions

• Can individual and household level interventions
  counter these risks?
• Limited success of these services
• Where do these excluded populations go?
• Restrictions on access to other tenures
• Precarious arrangements, temporary accommodation,
  potentially even street homelessness?