How many matters a month?

Like soo many House’s Charity is currently preparing to bid for the new round of CLS tenders.

The trouble with the Charity is that it pays its advisers too much money and as such can’t afford any administration. Still this doesn’t seem to worry the bosses of said Charity as they propose that one Housing adviser can do 27 Housing starts for each month they work and that they do all their own administration, everything. On top of this they must perform individual file reviews for two other advisers.

Of course 27 Housing starts is from day 1 of the Contract and does not take into account that other advisers might be ill, leave, get pregnant etc.

House thinks this is madness. Quality of advice is likely to go down the toilet as advisers struggle to meet ever more impossible targets with fewer resources. 

For many, especially those who just deal with Legal Help, there is no profit at all anymore in running a contract, in fact it would appear from House’s experience that Organisations have gone from making a slight profit (too subsidise other parts of the Organisation), having an administrator and full time adviser to making no profit and often a loss with full time adviser who is overworked due to having no administration at all.

Ho hum, got a bit off topic there.

On topic, how many Legal Help Housing matters do you think a Housing adviser could do with no administration at all?

Stealing your matters

It would appear that John Sirodcar of the LSC is trying to run away with your matter starts. More info HERE.

£100

House is tired of advising the homeless people with low incomes who have no priority need for accommodation.

Sometimes Foyers will help young people, some hostels might temporarily help others. Rent deposit schemes might help a few (even fewer as many LA’s will only offer them to those who have a Priority Need, figure that one out!) if you are lucky enough be accepted and find a landlord willing to take whatever form of bond might be offered. A crisis loan might help a few as it can pay for rent in advance if you are lucky enough to find a landlord who accepts housing benefit.

For the rest House despairs. Who knows why the ‘Social Fund’ can’t pay for deposits.

 House knows of a housing adviser who ended up lending their client £100 just so they would have a roof over their head. The client was a single homeless person who had got themselves a key worker and a support worker whilst coming off drugs. Sadly they weren’t vulnerable enough to have a priority need. Their rent deposit application was turned down.

They didn’t know anyone. They were sleeping rough and shoplifting for food whilst trying to find accommodation. Most Landlords they contacted wouldn’t take Housing Benefit. Most wanted £500 + deposit plus rent in advance. The client was beginning to despair. The temptation to relapse into drug addiction was great.

 Finally the client found a Landlord who only required £250 deposit. As the client only had £150 the adviser came to lend them £100.

Should they have done so, professionally maybe not, but can one blame them?

The £100 may well have prevented the client relapsing into drugs and from shoplifting with all the cost to society that these two things bring. Finally the £100 just gave a person trying to change themselves a roof over their head and a chance to better themselves.

Sad.

 

 

Shelter Petition on overcrowding

The Homelessness charity Shelter is asking people to sign an e-petition regarding our rather outdated overcrowding laws. Please sign up HERE.

Whilst House thinks the law on overcrowding won’t change it certainly won’t if one doesn’t try!

 

More shortsightedness

Thanks to the LAG blog, House, being a fan of prevention rather than punishment, found THIS video very interesting.

If you’re homeless and wonder why the LA won’t help you.

If you’re Homeless or threatened with homelessness in 28 days and want assistance from a Local Authority then a Local Authority should treat you in accordance with the Housing Act 1996, particularly Part VII. In addition to this they should take note of guidance contained within the Homelessness Code of Guidance.

Unfortunately for you the Department for Community and Local Government don’t like  Local Authorities acting in accordance with the Law. The reasons for this are many, one of them is that it messes up their nice statistics such as these taken from here.

Now preventing homelessness can be a good thing (and House does, in certain circumstances, see the value in Rent Deposit schemes) but as the CLG don’t enquire too much as to how LA’s reduce homelessness LA’s will often refuse to assist you in accordance with the Law. For example if you are homeless and give the LA reason to believe you are homeless then if you are told to go away and you do you won’t be recorded as a homeless statistic because the LA won’t have taken a ‘homeless approach from you’. Great for the stats, bad for you.   

This is not to say the LA won’t help anyone, that’s because it would look rather too suspicious and the CLG don’t really won’t everyone to know they are quite aware that LA’s aren’t helping people as they should.

Further to this, House has reason to believe that some organisations that you might seek advice from in order to challenge the LA won’t help you to the best of their ability because they receive funding from the LA and this might be withdrawn if they complain to the LA too much.

This is why House likes to show tricks commonly used to get people to go away. You can see some tricks HERE. Other tricks will be  published by House in due course.

Sadly it would appear that homeless people aren’t valued much by society so this isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

Inside Housing article

Inside Housing is often worth a little visit. House found this article quite interesting. A quick Google reveals (item 3) the discussion around the impact of G v Southwark.

House doesn’t have much to do with Social Services in London but from House’s experience of Social Services in House’s area one wonders how Mark Scott comes to the conclusion joint working protocols are working ‘well’. House is open to the idea they might but can’t help think that they are indeed ‘not’ working well.

Television eviction shockers

House admits that linking the editorial comment in this months LAG regarding the recent plenet report ‘Measuring young people’s legal capability‘ and Channel 4’s Hollyoaks might seem a bit odd.

House happened to watch last Friday’s episode, the 16th Oct, (don’t hate House)  and rather oddly got angry at one of the storylines which involved a family who had fallen into £40 worth of rent arrears. The Landlord of the property promptly let himself into the property, demanded his rent and when it was not forthcoming gave the family (who would have been periodic assured shorthold tenants) 24 hours notice to get out of his house. The tenants promptly packed up their belongings and having no where to go as a family found separate accommodation.

Now House blames Nearly Legal for the fact that House was then trying to think about how much the family could then sue the landlord for. But NO the show made no hint that the Landlord had done anything wrong at all. This annoys House as House has happened to see things like this on other soaps to. Yes yes House knows they are fictional but when it comes tenants always get the wrong end of the stick!

Hollyoaks makes a point of the fact that it provides support with the range of issues its storyline raises but with this point they are sorely lacking. It shouldn’t annoy House but with so many young people seemingly believing everything they watch on TV perhaps they could have the Landlord being visited by the local Tenancy Relations Officer!

House has sent an email to the Hollyoaks team and awaits a response!

House doesn’t have much of a life.

Deposit protection and cashflows!

Again just a quicky as it was only mentioned briefly by a Letting Agent who was talking to House. Said Agent stated that a few small Letting Agents had been put out of business due to the fact they used to rely on the fact they held the tenant’s deposits and this assisted them greatly with their cashflow.

Local Housing Allowance Calculator

Just a House quicky, THIS LHA calculator is rather handy. Enjoy!

Link added to.