Agenda item

To provide an update on Temporary Accommodation in the Borough.  

Denise Gandy, Executive Director of Housing Demand at HfH, presented some slides on temporary accommodation in Haringey, which had been circulated to Panel Members in advance, and highlighted some key points:

• Haringey has historically had a heavy reliance on temporary accommodation. There had been 6,000 households in temporary accommodation in 2006. The current figure is 2,931 which is about the third or fourth highest of any borough in the country.
• The Homelessness Reduction Act, which came into force in April last year, had been very significant as the Council is now seeing around a third more people than previously, including more single people. The legislation is to be welcomed but it doesn’t come with any additional supply so presents a challenge.
• Access to social housing lets is falling with the decant of the Tangmere and Northolt block on the Broadwater Farm Estate having a significant impact.
• Temporary accommodation is used in a number of circumstances. Sometimes it is provided in short term emergency situations such as for someone fleeing from domestic violence, other times it is when the Council has a relief duty under the Homelessness Reduction Act or where the Council has reason to believe that a household will be owed a homelessness duty and needs to investigate further. The homelessness duty can be discharged through an offer of suitable social housing or private rented accommodation but the shortage of suitable housing means that some households can remain in temporary accommodation for a long period of time.
• The Homelessness Reduction Act has added more emphasis on the importance of preventing homeless including through a “prevention duty” on local authorities to try to prevent the homelessness of anyone who is at risk of becoming homeless in the next 56 days. Everyone that the Council sees through this receives a personalised housing plan.
• The government has also changed the funding arrangements for temporary accommodation. Instead of the management fee of £40 per week per property that local authorities received, this has been replaced by the Flexible Homelessness Support Grant to carry out work on homelessness which is £6.7m for Haringey in 2019/20. This has to be offset against the losses made on temporary accommodation so may not in reality be as large an allocation as is seems.
• In addition to the Lodges referred to earlier, the other types of temporary accommodation used includes Council housing, properties leased from landlords on a 3 or 5 year basis, properties leased from landlords on a nightly basis and properties leased and managed by housing associations.
• There is a Temporary Accommodation Allocations Policy which was agreed by Cabinet which describes who has priority for local temporary accommodation. Families typically stay in one of the Lodges first, further work has been done to support single people including the conversion of properties on Hale Road into hostels.
• Only 347 social housing lets are expected to be offered this year. As there are significant pressures due to the decant of the Northolt block on the Broadwater Farm estate, only 90 of these let are expected to go to people in Temporary Accommodation.
• The provision of temporary accommodation cost the Council nearly £8m last year.
• Future work includes some work with the Fairness Commission, learning from the recent Ombudsman findings and investing the Flexible Homelessness Support Grant.

Cllr Ibrahim added that £13.5m had been invested in 2018/19 so far in purchasing 47 street properties which are now being used for temporary accommodation and represents a significant increase in this type of investment compared to previous years.

Asked about the timetable for the decant of blocks on the Broadwater Farm Estate, Alan Benson said that all tenants are now out of Tangmere block but there are still three resident leaseholders living there. Some people have started to move out from Northolt block but this decant is expected to take a little longer, most of these are 1-bedroom properties so it is slightly easier to move them out but is will put pressure on lettings for 1-bedroom properties.

On the development of housing on Hale Road, Denise Gandy said these were previously not let on a permanent basis so these were given on licence to another organisation to let. These properties have now been taken back into HfH management, have been refurbished and there is now a support provider there which is St Mungos.

Asked why the proportion of Temporary Accommodation that is from landlords on a nightly basis is so high (there were 1,490 of these according to one of the slides), Denise Gandy said that many landlords who used to work in the leased sector have shifted to the nightly paid sector because it is more lucrative when demand is high. The spend is a big proportion of the £8m spent on Temporary Accommodation, further details could be circulated on the precise costs. (ACTION) Dan Hawthorn added that the Council’s aim is to drive that proportion down through various initiatives because it is this type of temporary accommodation that is the most expensive and also the most difficult type to guarantee the quality of the accommodation.