Early intervention approach minimising arrears, evictions & abandonments

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The context

In the year before the pandemic (2019-20), 1,759 households were evicted for rent arrears by social landlords in Scotland. 3,380 social homes were recovered as abandoned. Not everyone who loses a social home goes onto present as homeless – at least not immediately – and national statistics suggest only around 2% of annual homelessness applications are due to social landlord eviction for arrears.

Yet social landlords are uniquely positioned to minimise these eventualities. This means even when evictions and abandonments are statistically and/or comparatively low, there may still be more that social landlords can do – as North West Glasgow landlord, QCHA, is demonstrating.

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The intervention

QCHA manages nearly 4,300 homes, with officers working generically on small patches of around 300 tenants. QCHA has never had significant challenges with rent collection, nor registered high rates of eviction for arrears, compared to Scottish averages. But the association recognised there were nevertheless significant discrepancies between housing officers’ individual approaches to managing arrears (for example, use of notices) and in their outcomes for both tenants and the organisation.

Acknowledging they could do more to minimise evictions and abandonments (12 and 25, respectively, in 2017-18), QCHA reviewed working practices. They also invested in an IT system giving housing officers early warnings of tenants going into arrears, so they could prioritise contact and target support. Whilst highly beneficial for some - such as new staff with no knowledge of the patch, or those less adept in managing rent accounts – the IT solution made no difference to one housing officer. Their patch consistently had low arrears; in almost a decade they’d never taken court action, much less evicted anyone. So QCHA studied the practices of this officer to learn what could be applied more widely.

The officer was effectively embodying an early intervention approach, starting even before a prospective tenant accepted a home, with a conversation on rent. The approach can be summed up as getting to know each tenant well; establishing a relationship; avoiding reliance on standard letters; aiming to get all tenants a month ahead to provide a ‘safety net’; and prioritising quick, firm but supportive contact if any issues develop. Of those, being able to establish a rapport such that the tenant responds is the most important. QCHA subsequently asked the officer to take on a training, monitoring, advice and complex arrears casework role to maximise their impact.

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The outcome

Evictions for arrears by QCHA fell from 12 in 2017-18, to four in 2018-19, to none in the past two years. Simultaneously, the % of rent due represented by arrears fell consistently from 5.4% in 2017-18 to 2.6% in 2020-21: much below Scottish averages (which went in the opposite direction). Abandonments, which QCHA assessed were also often due to rent difficulties, fell from 25 in 2017-18 to 13 in 2020-21.

On a granular level, after ‘early intervention’ was adopted, all patches recorded a drop in arrears for the first time. Tenants with clear rent accounts increased from 42% to 62% (75% if technical arrears are omitted). This was achieved with no legal interventions. Frontline staff also gave positive feedback on seeing the approach made a difference for tenants, which previously felt impossible to achieve.

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Key insights

•  get to know your tenants well, so contact and action can be tailored and targeted - small patches help; where this is not possible, an IT system which predicts issues can be beneficial
• avoid standard letters and generic escalation processes: calls, visits, texts work better for most
• respond quickly to problems and follow-up any action – positive (i.e. a payment made) or negative (i.e. a broken arrangement). This lets tenants know you’re there, aware and you care

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Find out more…

Elizabeth Hood, Depute Director, Queens Cross Housing Association
ehood@qcha.org.uk