Homeless Households Accessing the Private Rented Sector
Speaking Notes

Introduction
By the end of 2012 all unintentionally homeless households will have a legal
right to settled accommodation. This has led to a review of national policy on
homelessness with an increasing focus on prevention.
We have been working closely with the Scottish Government and are hosting
one of five regional Hubs established to promote a housing options approach
to homelessness prevention. Our hub partners are: Aberdeen,
Aberdeenshire, Eilean Siar, Moray, Shetland and Orkney Councils.
Our Council set up its Homeless Prevention Team in June 2011. The team
aims to help service users maintain existing accommodation or source an
alternative housing option, with a particular emphasis on finding suitable
private rented housing.
The approach has been extremely successful with the Scottish Government
recently reporting a 40% reduction in statutory homeless cases in Highland,
and 21% of closed homeless prevention cases accessing a private rented
sector tenancy.
The Council has also seen a reduction in the number of homeless people
placed in temporary bed and breakfast accommodation since the team was
set up.
The team has developed close partnership working arrangements across all
sectors including local lettings agencies, Highland Family Mediation, Citizens
Advice Bureau, Highland Council’s Income Maximisation Team and external
housing support providers.
Thanks to the commitment and enthusiasm of the Homelessness Prevention
Team, other staff within the Council and partner agencies this new approach
is making a real difference in helping people find housing options which
prevent homelessness.
How have we done this?

Staff, Motivated & Trained
It is vital that we ensure front line staff are equipped with the positive attitude
and appropriate training that they need to help motivate service users access
the private rented sector. The North Hub recently commissioned a training
needs analysis of the role by Shelter Scotland and our Homeless Prevention
Officers are now working through a training plan consisting of:
-
EU nationals housing rights training,
-
PDA in Housing Law, Information & Advice, Shelter Scotland
-
Security of Tenure Training, delivered by Shelter Scotland
-
Motivation Interview Technique Training, delivered by NHS Highland
This is training plan is on going and is vital to making sure that staff are well
equipped and supported. This training plan also motivates the team by
demonstrating the Council’s commitment to the approach.

Support the Private Rented Sector
We must build up good partnership working relationships with the private
rented sector and gain their trust if we want them to house the homeless
service users we are working with. Initially I spent a lot of time speaking to
landlords and lettings agents to consult with them regarding what support they
need from the Council to house service users in receipt of benefits in their
housing stock. As a result of this exercise we now support the sector in
several ways:
- Consultation regarding the Deposit Guarantee Scheme, and the
Homeless Prevention Approach with the private rented sector and
listening to their comments.
- Utilising Local Housing Allowance safeguard referrals whenever
possible to ensure that LHA is paid direct to landlords.
- Income Maximisation referrals to increase affordability of private lets.
- Income / expenditure analysis by Money Advice professional to ensure
that the tenancy is affordable.
- Housing Support put in place to deal with any benefit niggles or other
support needs at the start of the tenancy to try and ensure that the
tenancy is sustainable.
- Offering to liaise between the landlord and tenant if the relationship
between the two has broken down to try and rebuild that relationship
and trust.
- Fast track arrangements with the Council’s benefit team for homeless
prevention LHA applications.
- Notifications from the Council’s benefits team to the homeless
prevention team when LHA is suspended etc.
By offering the above it becomes clear to landlords that our Council is serious
about supporting these tenancies. We must remember that we are in effect
creating social tenancies in the private rented sector and must support them
accordingly.
If we do not support these private sector tenancies after sign up and they
subsequently fail, we will lose the trust of landlords and they will stop working
with us very quickly.
It is an obvious point but worth stressing that rent arrears are an even more
critical factor in private rented sector tenancies than in the social rented
sector. The reason being that the relationship between landlord and the
tenant can fail quickly and badly given the property is a personal resource of a
private landlord rather than part of a large corporate social rented stock.
Separating an advocacy role relating to the private rented sector from the
Homeless Prevention Team, to allow the Team to build positive working
relationships with the sector is also key to developing good links with the
sector.
In Highland, we have a CAB Advice Officer based within the Homeless
Prevention Team who takes on this challenging advocacy role whenever
appropriate, CAB Role within the Homeless prevention Team is defined as
-
Challenging illegal NTQs
-
Assisting private tenants accessing the PRHP
-
Advice & assistance / liaison with Police re illegal evictions
-
Tenure rights advice:
-no lease
-Renting a room
-in a sublet situation
-living in tied accommodation
-etc.
-
Providing advice to landlords re standard lease & correct forms AT5
etc.
-
Advocacy role – negotiating rent arrears repayment arrangements
with private landlords
-
Challenging fees levied by private landlords e.g. late rent fee

Providing independent advice to Highland Housing Register
tenants who wish to relinquish a secure tenancy to purse an
option in the private sector

Develop The Private Rented Sector
In Highland, the private rented sector is strongest in the Moray Firth basin
around Inverness and its surrounding towns, and weakest in the west and
north coasts of Highland where most private landlords focus on seasonal
tourist lets.
As a result is relatively easy to source a fairly long term private rented sector
in Inverness or Dingwall but much harder in Fort William and Skye and almost
impossible in west Sutherland and Caithness.
As I mentioned, these apparent gaps in the sector are affected greatly by
landlords in those areas relying on seasonal tourist lets, however a lack of
cohesion in the sector also contributes to these apparent gaps as many rental
properties in our more rural areas are not managed professionally by
landlords but by individuals who happen to have a property and do not
consider themselves to be landlords despite being just that.
These ‘accidental’ landlords have often inherited a property and are unsure
what to do with it or don’t have time to manage it correctly.
Another development challenge with our private rented sector in Highland is
that larger scale landlords do not have any means to gauge demand for
development purposes in the same way that we do in the social rented sector.
So any landlords increasing their stock do so on the basis of affordable
investment opportunities in the areas with a proven private rented sector, i.e.
the Moray Firth basin area.
In order to try and address both these development challenges in Highland we
hope to develop a website which will allow potential tenants to advertise their
housing need, and also allow landlords to advertise available properties to let.
Once established, this resource would not only allow private rented sector
demand in different parts of Highland to be gauged for development
purposes, but it will pull together the very fractured sector that we have into
one place, making it more easily accessible for service users.
This is an area of development which we are currently working on. In late
2012 we hope to implement a website similar to that developed by Kirklees
Council and the DWP – letshelpyou.co.uk.
-

Service Users
Service users must be motivated to work with Homeless Prevention Officers
and not just be allowed to drift into homelessness and the ‘homeless route’.
Partners across all sectors must be ‘on message’ with homeless prevention
and change the language that they use slightly when working with service
users, for the past 10 years housing advice given by social workers, support
workers, outreach workers etc. has all been based around statutory homeless
presentations. We need their message to service users to change to take
account of homeless prevention, otherwise service users will have unrealistic
expectations when we meet them.
It can be a challenge in itself to change those expectations before we even
begin to work with a service user, so it is vital that partners in all sectors are
brought up to date with homeless prevention through local briefings,
workshops, and presentations to team meetings. This can be time consuming
but it is crucial.
We must encourage service users to work towards realistic housing
expectations
- unfortunately sometimes, this is a difficult discussion to have with a service
user who desires their own flat or house but just cannot afford one.
Housing & Employability Plan
We must help service users to move towards their ‘ideal’ housing option in a
series of housing steps including employability measures. Our homeless
prevention officers have been working along these lines with local housing
support providers, supporting clients and service users in their existing
accommodation whilst we try get them ready for the housing option that they
are aspiring toward.
We have invited colleagues in the Council’s Employability Team and
Education Service to work with the Prevention Team and two of our local
support providers to develop a Personal Housing & Employability plan.
It is intended that the plan will be used by all services and partners working
with service users to help them plan to address their housing and
employability challenges.

Close
It’s very early days for Homeless Prevention in Highland but we have seen
some encouraging results not only in statistical terms, but more importantly in
the reaction we have seen from the public, the press and our partners towards
the approach that we have taken towards homeless prevention.