Categoría IA: Impacto Ambiental

The requirements in relation to sharing housing if aged under 35 are likely to be extended to new social rented tenants. This is alongside a series of changes that will reduce the security of tenure in the social rented sector and bring social rented tenants into the same position as people renting privately. The UK private rented sector ofers poor security of tenure and

is amongst the least afordable in Europe66_.

The Housing First model is built on the idea that resettlement and reintegration into society following homelessness is centred around providing someone with their own, settled ordinary home. Being required to share with others, particularly when someone may well have high treatment and support needs if rehoused in the private rented sector, or having to subsidise rent costs with welfare benefits designed to pay for food and fuel, if living alone in social rented housing with two bedrooms, potentially undermines the Housing First model. Housing First forms the backbone of the Canadian and French strategies to tackle recurrent and repeated single homelessness associated with severe mental illness67_,

strategies that would not have been attempted if there were doubt that service users would have enough income to meet the housing and subsistence costs. In the original model of Housing First in New York, referral criteria had to centre on eligibility for a specific Federally provided welfare benefit, conditional on having a psychiatric diagnosis, to ensure service users had enough money to contribute towards the rent and to live on68_.

66 Kenna, P., Benjaminsen, L., Busch-Geertsema, V. and Nasarre-Aznar, S. (2016) Pilot project – Promoting protection of the right to housing – Homelessness prevention in the context of evictions Brussels: European Union

67 Pleace, N. (2016) Housing First Guide Europe Brussels: FEANTSA. 68 Tsemberis, S. (2010) Op. Cit.

69 Gaetz, S. (2014) Can Housing First Work for Youth? European Journal of Homelessness 8 (2) pp.159- 175.

The restrictions on benefit support with meeting the costs of renting housing potentially undermine the efectiveness of Housing First in LCR.

There are limits to what the local authorities can do in response to these restrictions, one alternative is to provide supplementary funding to compensate for the limitations of the benefit system, which obviously adds to the cost of Housing First. The other is to combine with other interested parties and lobby for exemptions around the bedroom ‘tax’ in social rented housing and limiting benefits to a room in a shared house if under 35, when someone has been assessed as eligible for a Housing First service. The viability of Housing First as a strategic level response to single homelessness and rough sleeping, is brought into question when many potential service users face benefit restrictions that will not enable them to live independently in their own home.

The restriction of the housing cost element of Universal Credit for 18- 21 year-olds also has a potential impact on Housing First. While there are exemptions for 18-21 year- olds - which include experience of homelessness - the main criteria centre on a young person not being able to live with their parent or parents. Debates about the appropriateness of using Housing First for young people are ongoing69_{, but clearly, further}

benefit restrictions are not helpful. As with the exemptions for adults aged 22-34, requirements for experience of homelessness potentially undermines the use of Housing First as a

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Policy context

Benefit System Payments for Rent in Supported Housing

The benefit reforms which will reduce the amount of rent paid to supported housing tenants, i.e. living in congregate or communal settings, or in core and cluster schemes were first proposed in 2011, becoming more specific in 201670_{. Supported housing}

often charges an additional premium on rent to help cover operating costs which are higher than in general needs housing. Technically, since the short-lived Supporting People reforms in England, funding for support

and housing costs (rent and service charges) have been separated, but in reality part of the funding for allowing supported housing to function has come from the housing benefit system paying higher rents and service charges. The reforms, at the time of writing, are scheduled to come into efect in April

2019, reducing payments to the levels awarded to eligible tenants in the private rented sector, i.e. at applicable local housing allowance (LHA) rates, which are generally lower than the current rent levels for much supported housing. Supported housing will however be exempt from the

requirements for people aged under 35 to share housing and from the restrictions to claiming welfare benefits to meet ordinary housing costs, being applied to 18-21 year-olds71_.

Homelessness service providers operating supported housing, alongside those social landlords and charities providing rented sheltered and supported housing for older people and people with disabilities, have voiced concerns about this change72_{. It is important to note that}

70 https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/funding-for-supported-housing

71 Wilson, W. (2016) Paying for Supported HousingHouse of Commons Library Briefing Paper Number 6080, 28 December 2016.

72 National Housing Federation (2016) Submission: A proposal for a strong and sustainable future for supported and sheltered housing London: National Housing Federation.

73 Pleace, N (2008 Changing Supporting People funding in England: Results from a pilot exercise, London: Communities and Local Government

74 See the Annual Reviews of single homelessness support in England compiled by Homeless Link http://www.homeless.org.uk/facts/our-research/annual-review-of-single-homelessness-support-in- england

funding will be reallocated in the first instance, with local authorities receiving an amount that is supposedly equivalent to the extra benefit

payments that covered the total cost of supported housing rents. This will allow local authorities to ‘top up’ the benefit system payments (equivalent to the accepted level of private rented sector rent) when they assess supported housing schemes as requiring an additional rental payment. Government proposal for this model of ‘top-up’ funding have indicated ‘ring fencing’ of these funds to meet the additional cost of supported housing. However a concern is that this form of change has been experienced before. Enhanced rates of benefit paid to people in supported housing, which covered both housing and support costs, were replaced in 2003. Rent was paid by the benefit system and a separate ‘Supporting People’ budget, to cover support costs, was created. This Supporting People budget nominally made the same amount of funding available (again administered by local authorities) to pay support costs, previously paid for by the benefit system. The Supporting People budget, which still exists in Wales and Northern Ireland, was first cut significantly and then, efectively, abolished in England73

when the ‘ring fencing’ was removed. Cuts to supported housing provision for homeless people followed74_.

Theoretically, this exercise could follow the same pattern, the ‘premium’ paid for supported housing rents at first being separated as a distinct budget and then subjected to cuts, possibly ceasing to exist as a specific funding stream at some point thereafter.