In the past, the focus of homelessness charities and service providers like ourselves has been on people homeless moving from hostels and supported housing into self-contained social housing flats. Recently more use has been made of the private rented sector – although most accommodation is still self-contained. In both cases the quality of the accommodation is adequate – sometimes very good – but for many of our clients good quality accommodation just isn't enough to stablise their lives, particularly after the devastating impact of homelessness on self-confidence and identity.
Peer Landlord London is our attempt to give people who have been homeless the opportunity to do 'normal' things in 'normal' ways. It provides a housing option where tenants who have been homeless have more control: they have a choice of property; choice of sharers; a choice of when to move on.
Most of us at some point will have shared housing with our peers. Through that experience we will have gained close friendships, shared the good and bad times – and many of us will have eventually got to the point where we want to move on to our own home.
Often homeless people won't have had this experience. They find themselves alone and isolated, with an acute sense of the street lifestyle they're trying to get away from, but very little sense of what a more positive alternative to this has to offer.
Employment is a big part of this picture. More than 70% of Thames Reach service users tell us they want to work, but only around 10% actually do so. There are lots of reasons for this – poor employment histories, outdated skills, bad health – but in London high rents are also a big part of this. In inner London and the south-east of England, the local housing allowance is currently £185 per week for a one bedroom flat or sudio. Social housing rents are currently exempt from this allowance and can exceed this.
Some figures put the situation in context: people working a 40 hours and paid the minimum wage will receive £243 a week before deductions, meaning housing benefit claimants have limited financial incentives to move into work. If we are serious about helping people find work we need to be serious about charging rents that people can afford.
To tackle all these problems, the peer landlord scheme is offering access to a room in shared three-bedroom houses, purchased by Commonweal and leased to us. We pass on the cost of the lease, and charge maintenance and minimal management costs.
We keep costs down by using a peer landlord to take responsibility for the positive management of the houses and routine tasks. Thames Reach collects the rent, and agrees and manages tenancies.
This isn't supported housing and we don't provide formal support to the tenants, although we know how floating support can be accessed if it is needed. This light touch management allows us to charge a rent of between £75 and £90 per person per week. Savings in management costs allow Thames Reach to provide financial support to individual tenants for future housing costs when they are ready to move on.
These are early days – we're just opening our third house – but it's proving a popular option with a long and growing waiting list. Commonweal not only provided the capital for this scheme, but also the energy and focus to help us design new options for our clients.
Commonweal is also developing a parallel peer landlord scheme with Catch22, the specialist young people's charity. The emphasis for this model is about developing those positive relationship skills, resilience and ability to cope with shared housing; skills vital for a world where government policy means shared housing will be the norm for most single people well in to their thirties.
Bill Tidnam is director of housing and community support at Thames Reach
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