Preventative social housing allocation

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The context

The PRS has a key role to play preventing and alleviating homelessness in local authorities where location is key, especially rural areas where social stock is limited. But whilst a ‘maximal options’ approach emphasises consideration of all tenures, it’s also the case that for some households in every local authority area, social housing will be the only viable, affordable and sustainable option.

In Shetland, with one of the smallest and least affordable PRS in Scotland, social housing is likely to offer the only option for many households at risk of homelessness. As such, Shetland Islands Council stepped up the preventative role allocations can play, alongside meeting its statutory homelessness duties.

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The intervention

Though Shetland has one of the lowest rates of homelessness (relative to population size) in Scotland, if people do become homeless they generally face very long rehousing journeys. 60% of households need no support apart affordable housing. For single people, stays in temporary accommodation are the second longest in Scotland (behind Midlothian). The Council has long aimed to take a more nuanced, ‘upstream’ view to prevention in its allocations policy, enabling ‘insecurity of tenure’ points to be applied to applicants with homelessness risk within six, rather than the more usual two, months.

The Council doesn’t automatically apply insecurity of tenure points on prevention grounds: this depends on the individual household’s situation, with other prevention action taken alongside. The Council must be satisfied actual homelessness could occur to apply points for this reason. That may involve a notice period from a private let, tied tenancy or owned home, or a situation of impending unaffordability, such as the benefit cap applied on loss of work, or a relationship breakdown.

In 2019, specifically to enhance its ability to prevent homelessness at an earlier point in time, the Council increased the level of points awarded in this category. That enabled certain households whom the Council deemed very likely to become homeless within the next six months to be offered a social property before they reached crisis and needed temporary accommodation.

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The outcome

In 2020-21, 33 households awarded insecurity of tenure points on basis of probably future homelessness in the next six months were offered Council housing before this occurred. Almost half were single applicants, the most over-represented group in Shetland’s homelessness system (70% of households waiting with homelessness points at financial year end were single applicants). Though a small number, 33 households is very significant in island communities: it represents half of the number of households accepted as statutory homeless in Shetland last year (67). As the authority also increased allocations to the statutory homeless group last year, as well as nominations to its RSL partner, the number of live homeless cases in Shetland declined from 109 in 2019 to 89 in 2021, with households in temporary accommodation (77) on 31 March 2021 the lowest number since 2010.

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Key insights

• giving a level of social housing priority to households with insecure housing tenure who are more than two months away from statutory homelessness can help them avert crisis
• whilst, in law, Scottish social landlords can’t take household income into account when allocating, this doesn’t prevent them from acknowledging households whose current housing affordability (for example, benefit cap producing an unaffordable shortfall) places them at future homelessness risk
• balancing preventative allocations with rapid rehousing recommendations to increase allocations to statutory homeless groups is a genuine challenge in some authorities in Scotland at present, and likely to take considerable time to achieve: but the direction of travel is clear

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Find out more…

Anita Jamieson, Executive Manager: Housing, Shetland Islands Council
anita.jamieson@shetland.gov.uk

Ruby Whelan, Team Leader: Housing Management, Shetland Islands Council
ruby.whelan2@shetland.gov.uk