Facilitated access to private renting as a preventative approach

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The context

A focus on ‘maximal housing options’ is central to rapid rehousing policy and to plans to strengthen prevention law in Scotland. Perth and Kinross Council is widely regarded as inaugurating a rapid rehousing approach with their 2016 Home First policy, which radically reduced the impact, duration and costs of homelessness, especially prolonged use of temporary accommodation.

Key to Home First is a focus on a range of solutions for most households seeking housing, recognising the PRS can meet some needs as well as, or in some cases, better than social housing. Partly due to complexities and lack of precedent discharging homelessness duties into the sector, the PRS has tended to play a homelessness prevention rather than alleviation role.

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The intervention

Perth and Kinross Council’s PRS Initiatives Team was set up in 2009 as Private Sector Leasing (PSL) wound down. The Council bought a commissioned, poorly performing deposit bond scheme in house and restructured the service. They also created an in-house social letting agency, PKC Lets, offering tenant find and good value property management to landlords who appreciated those elements of PSL. Many PSL landlords stuck with the Council – so stock previously used as temporary accommodation became the foundation for a Council-run lettings agency for settled homes.

Any household with a level of housing need can get help from the team, as long as they can manage a private tenancy. Households don’t need to be homeless or threatened with homelessness in two months. The team completes an affordability assessment and helps with property find, move-in (including benefit claims and furniture), rent in advance and any support needed. Applicants either find their own property and the Council steps in to negotiate the let with a bond or cash deposit, or they can be offered a property managed by PKC Lets.

Landlords can use the ‘bond only’ option; PKC Lets marketing, tenant find and tenancy set-up; or a full property management service. The latter includes rent collection, inspection and repairs coordination, for a monthly fee of £30+VAT per home. The service negotiates rents with landlords to ensure good value. Including homes above Local Housing Allowance (LHA) prevents the service being seen as a ‘low end’ option by either landlords or applicants, and gives more choice to both. Owners seeking help to bring a home back into use via the Empty Homes Initiative can access advice, as well as grants, on condition the property is made available to the PRS Team at LHA rate for an initial five-year period.

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The outcome

Since 2010, the PRS Initiatives Team has helped almost 2,000 households into private tenancies. Most were threatened with homelessness in the two months or more, so avoided homelessness through this option. PKC Lets now manages 180 homes, with the Council running a rent deposit service alongside, housing 160 households in PRS in 2019-20. A Council-run lettings agency has also helped drive up the standard of local private rented housing, ensure empty homes grants benefit people in housing need, and enabled better prevention through a pool of well-engaged private landlords.

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Key insights

• a well-resourced, flexible PRS team working closely with private landlords locally can offer people in housing need a wider range of options - enabling them to avoid homelessness
• including above-LHA homes as well as households in any form of housing need helps prevent a PRS service being seen as a ‘last resort’, attracts a broader range of landlords and widens options for planned and sometimes aspirational,rather than crisis-driven, moves
• co-locating PRS teams with housing options ensures private renting is a key part of discussions: officers can present rapid PRS solutions which can’t be offered by the social housing system without a homelessness journey

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Find out more…

Jennifer Kent, Private Sector Coordinator, Perth & Kinross Council
jakent@pkc.gov.uk