Over the last six months or so, the world of social housing has been turned on its head. Radical changes have been made to the way social housing is funded and let to tenants. Taxpayer investment in social housing is set to plummet, replaced with a greater emphasis on revenue account funding of private debt, the security offered by life-long tenancies may vanish and more property will be let by housing associations on an affordable rent basis.
People with learning disabilities, who have never done particularly well out of social housing are likely to find things even harder. In short, the problem with social housing, both now and in the past – there isn’t enough of it to go round!
In our experience, people with a learning disability in the main get a raw deal from social housing. Very few people with a learning disability who have a genuine housing need find a solution through their local housing authority. Worse still, some of the arrangements used by councils to let property , for example Choice Based Lettings, have been shown to actively discriminate against people with a learning disability. In a recent discussion with a Housing Options service in one of the London Boroughs, it was claimed that at most the service could provide new social housing for five people with a learning disability a year. Given that the same council had plans to reduce the number of people with a learning disability living in residential care by three hundred, five a year didn’t seem to be much of a contribution!
However, in the midst of the doom and gloom, new opportunities for social care and support providers may arise to help people with learning disabilities get decent homes. Commissioners are likely to seek new ways of funding social housing for disabled people (because they can no longer rely on capital grant from government) and in some cases they will have capital of their own to contribute towards new developments. Our advice to care and support providers (particularly in the Third Sector) who want to close their care homes and re-invest in, for example supported housing, is to talk to their commissioning partners to see if they can help. Providers following this path are sure to get a warm reception and maybe a capital contribution towards their schemes, particularly if they can produce a business case showing revenue savings.
Buy To Help offers the perfect vehicle for the recovered capital. Not only does it effectively recycle the money in housing for learning disabled people, it maintains the care and support package for the provider.
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