Over the last decade, more than 1,000 people with a learning disability have bought a share in a home of their own, mainly through the Homes and Communities Agency’s Home Ownership for People with Long Term Disabilities (HOLD) scheme. The Emergency Budget, announced by George Osborne in June 2010 inadvertently killed off the scheme, shutting off one of the most innovative ways to help people with a learning disability get a secure, quality home of their own.
Disabled people paid for their share of a shared ownership property with a mortgage provided by one of the high street building societies. The DWP helped them to meet their monthly mortgage payments through an Income Support related benefit called Support for Mortgage Interest (SMI). Housing Benefit helped people pay the rent on the share in the property owned by (normally) a housing association.
The June 2010 budget slashed the help offered by SMI by almost half and as a consequence the only building society lending to disabled on welfare benefits, declined to continue providing mortgages. The dozen or so housing associations involved in delivering shared ownership opportunities for people with learning disabilities have been forced to close their schemes. Thankfully, the position of those who had already bought a share in their home was protected by the building society. For information on the campaign to get the Coalition Government to reverse its decision to cut SMI for disabled people, click here »
A small number of care and support providers in the Third Sector also got involved with offering shared ownership opportunities for disabled people. They’re now looking at alternative ways of funding shared ownership. Buy To Help is one such scheme, and such are now saying it’s the ‘only’ scheme.
Shared ownership still has the potential to offer people with learning disabilities great housing opportunities and can help care and support providers, who are prepared to invest, build new care and support business. With that in mind, please take a look at the Buy To Help brochure »
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