£6 million will be used to buy 60 properties to provide long-term properties for homeless people in the Liverpool City Region.
Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram has announced plans to partner with impact investment firm Resonance, to invest the cash into helping some of the most vulnerable people in the region into new homes.
Under the plans, which the local leaders approved at a Combined Authority meeting on January 21, £1.5 million from the Combined Authority will be matched with £1.5m from the Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme (a Department for Levelling up Housing and Communities Programme) and £3m from the Resonance National Homelessness Property Fund 2, to buy approximately 60 properties across the city region.
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An additional £1.1m in revenue support from the Department of Levelling Up will be used to provide intensive support to service users who are housed in the purchased properties and help to ensure the tenants can manage long-term sustainable tenancies.
Those properties will be refurbished to a high standard and wherever practical, have their energy efficiency improved before being leased to local housing associations to provide accommodation for homeless people.
Around 35 of the properties will be used to provide homes for clients working with the Combined Authority’s Housing First programme, which has so far housed 135 of the 216 individuals who are engaged with the programme.
The ECHO has reported on a number of Housing First success stories, which have seen people holding down properties after spending years on the streets.
The remainder will be used to support local authority schemes to help homeless people into long-term accommodation.
One of the main challenges for Housing First has been the shortage of suitable one-bedroom properties across the city region, with housing associations reporting very low rates of empty properties, and rents in the private rented sector increasing significantly beyond what can be claimed through Local Housing Allowance rates, making the sector unaffordable for some of the City Region’s most vulnerable residents.
Speaking about the plans, Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, said: “There has been an alarming rise in homelessness over the past decade, as austerity stripped away many of the safety nets that some relied on. Instead of looking at statistics or targets to be met, our Housing First scheme treats people as human beings.
"Rather than cutting them adrift, we offer them wraparound support to address their complex issues. And, instead of temporary solutions, we’re helping to break the homelessness cycle and change people’s lives forever.
“The lack of suitable housing available across the region has limited the amount of good that we have been able to do, but we are always looking for innovative and imaginative solutions.
"This £6m investment will allow us to take control of our own permanent Housing First properties and ramp up the pace of our work.
“I have long been a champion of Housing First because of its potential to completely transform people’s lives. I’m really excited that by adopting this radical new approach we’ll be able to help even more people across our region.”
A lack of suitable housing has proved a limiting factor, both for our Housing First programme, and a variety of schemes run by our local authorities.
Councillor Graham Morgan, Portfolio Holder for Housing and Spatial Planning, said: “We are very happy to be working with Resonance along with local housing providers on this exciting project. Here in the Liverpool City Region we are using innovative approaches to tackle homelessness which are all based on putting the needs of the individual first. As a community we should be judged on how we treat our most vulnerable members, which makes this work amongst the most important the Combined Authority carries out.”
John Williams, Resonance’s Managing Director of Property Funds said: “I am delighted that this impact investment from the Metro Mayor of Liverpool City Region will enable National Homelessness Property Fund 2 to purchase around 60 homes specifically for local people who need somewhere safe to live because they are rough sleeping or at risk of homelessness.
"I am particularly pleased that our £3 million fund supports Liverpool City Region’s Housing First ambitions and will see around half of the properties purchased for people to be housed by this programme.
"Our fund will also partner with local housing partners to ensure people housed are supported to sustain their tenancies and provided with access to specialist support services, enabling them to make positive changes in other aspects of their lives, as well as providing first class housing management and a quality repairs service to ensure the homes remain fit for use for the foreseeable future.”
