Government Funding for Tenancies for Vulnerable People Announced

HOMELESSNESS - This morning, Robert Jenrick MP, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, has announced a £266 million package to support vulnerable people into long term accommodation.

The funding is part of the Next Steps Accommodation Programme which has been created to cover property costs and support new tenancies for homeless people and rough sleepers, who were provided with accommodation during the lockdown period.

From today, Local Authorities and London Boroughs can apply for the funding which is expected to support around 15,000 people.

The following types of short-term accommodation will be considered eligible for funding under the programme. Funding can be used for both the provision of new accommodation and the extension of existing accommodation:

• • Accommodation owned by a university, RP or private landlord and available for interim use.
• • PRS Access. This includes guaranteed rent or deposit schemes, mediation support and training, or landlord incentives.
• • Supported Housing. Additional support can be offered to enable access to supported accommodation or social housing.
• • Modular housing units where these can be made available with necessary facilities, including power and waste connections. These can usually be placed with temporary planning permission.
• • Hotels. This includes funding to extend contracts, where this is the only or best solution to keep people in safe accommodation.
• • Other forms of short-term accommodation to ensure that no one returns to the streets. Bidders are encouraged to be creative in their proposed response to reflect the expressed needs of individual rough sleepers.
• • Employment support and training either to access work directly or to improve individuals’ employability.
• • Reconnections with friends and family, including local, national and international reconnections.
• • Other forms of immediate support including tenancy sustainment support and immigration advice.

The closing date for applications from local authorities is Thursday 20 August.

ABC Note: The problem is not just funding, the problem is that Boris Johnson has failed to rescind Section 21 which means that landlords can evict tenants without any reason and it is being used by unscrupulous and unethical landlords to avoid paying for repairs. 

Additionally, 55% of all families do not have savings and the 5.2 million people who have signed on Universal Credit have to go through a waiting period before they start seeing any money. They can take a loan called an 'Advance' but that reduces their monthly payment. Masses of people are facing job losses this autumn, it is estimated that two million people are threatened by redundancy when the government Furlough schemes end in October. Some 45,000 people face eviction following August 23rd and the end of the moratorium on evictions. These are the hardworking families, the government talks about so much, citizens who have not intentionally done anything wrong.

There are just too many people chasing too few properties. Many flats are being let almost immediately and although that discrimination against tenants on welfare is illegal in practice, in reality, the practise is widespread. The property market has slumped, people are not moving, and many people are still in lockdown. 

In New York, the moratorium on evictions was set at a year. This time frame seems far more realistic. It will take time for the first wave of deadly COVID-19 to pass through the economy. We may see a second wave in the autumn. The virus is very much present in the community. What caused the massive deaths of the influenza pandemic in 1918 was that troops were moving around after World War One. The Spanish flu, also known as the 1918 flu pandemic, lasted from February 1918 to April 1920, it infected 500 million people–about a third of the world's population at the time–in four successive waves. 

This does not seem to be the right moment to force tenants from the accommodation they have where they know their situation and their neighbours and their health, moving into potentially crowded shared accommodation with strangers. We need to keep as many of the public in their existing accommodation as possible. This may upset profit-seeking landlords, upset that arrears have occurred, however, we must think of the greater good of society and the health of our nation. We need people ready to work as soon as possible and to pay taxes, to repay the fantastic public sector borrowing that is being taken on currently. We need a new army of entrepreneurs to build businesses to replace those lost, and to replace all the lost jobs. You need a stable environment to succeed in self-employment. You cannot build a business if you are forced to keep changing addresses. You have to focus. Your small initial profits would be drained-off, like your personal energy, by moving accommodation again and again.  

The ABC has written to the Housing Minister, DWP Minister and Colchester MP Will Quince, and we are writing to Prime Minister Boris Johnson. 

In the late 1950s in the third term of the Conservative government, a notorious landlord set the byword for band landlordism, Peter Rachman. Rachman became notorious for his exploitation of his tenants, with the word "Rachmanism" entering the Oxford English Dictionary as a synonym for the exploitation and intimidation of tenants. The shortage of properties was caused by the Blitz and the baby boom. Rachman was a criminal landlord - he was a small fish, in reality, however, he became a scapegoat to take away attention from much bigger landlords higher up the chain. A public outcry brought an end to landlords like these. Peter Rachman died in 1962 (aged 43) having lost his property empire and the Macmillan government was finally defeated in 1964. 

Boris Johnson has moved the Conservative government leftwards, but he will find himself balanced between the narrow interests of Tory landlords - who occupy the Tory front bench and Tory-supporting buy-to-let landlords balanced against the greater good of the community who are bearing the brunt of the pandemic. These are the people who will have to pay back all the money the government is currently borrowing.

The PM could lose his footing over this issue and it will be a great ball for Labour to pick up as they have objected in the past to private landlordism and the fact there is a Class of people who live off others without contributing anything much to GDP. We may see policies that turn buy-to-let landlords into an endangered species. That the letting housing section will become the domain of social landlords who will treat their tenants responsibly and have...very importantly, stakeholders to report to. The days of the lone private landlord acting like a medieval Baron, dispensing his or her justice at will with limited accountability, may become a thing of the past. This approaching housing crisis may prove to be the catalyst for change in society, and perhaps even a change in government.  

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