Housing

An issue that will be familiar to agencies working across the country is the limited supply of affordable accommodation but, for a number of reasons, the problem is perhaps more acute in rural areas. In a number of regions, house prices have been pushed up by an increasing level of 2nd Home ownership, which is reported as accounting for up to 83% of the housing stock in one village in East Anglia. In addition, the Right-To-Buy scheme reduced the supply of available Local Authority stock and in many cases this has not been adequately replaced. Although the total number of new homes being built in rural areas has increased in recent years, so has migration from urban to rural areas and the number of migrant workers in rural areas has increased by 200% in the last three years, as reported in the State Of The Countryside Report 2007.

"It's all expensive holiday apartments or family homes round here. The only flats available are on a rough estate in the next town, and no-one wants to live there. I wouldn't either!" Manager, Information and Advice Service

The availability of private rental accommodation is often low, wuth one-bed accommodation frequently prohibitively expensive, especially for young people. Anecdotal evidence also suggests a reluctance on the part of some private landlords or RSLs to house clients, particularly those with substance misuse issues, or to embrace rent deposit schemes. However, through regular attendance at regional landlord forums, a number of organisations, such as Exeter Housing Action Group in Devon, have been able to forge lasting relationships with local landlords. This can take some time, but is helped by engaging with landlords before and during prospective tenancies, offering advice and supporting clients with tenancy sustainment assistance, perhaps alongside a rent deposit scheme. Being able to show that a number of tenancies can be sustained with support from your agency in this way can be a persuasive tool to take along to landlord forums when seeking to access rented accommodation. Several local authorities also run landlord accreditation schemes to assist agencies in accessing accommodation from reliable landlords who are willing to house their client group.

"Some landlords have a hair-trigger approach to evictions. The slightest problem and they evict our clients and it's back to square one". Outreach Support Worker

Effective communication with housing providers on working with vulnerable clients is important. A substance misuse service in South-East England is currently developing drugs awareness training for housing providers to provide guidance on working with and supporting vulnerable clients in a bid to manage at-risk tenancies and reduce evictions. As detailed in the full report, a number of agencies such as Solo Housing and Market Rasen Foyer, and indeed some local councils, have specialist workers dedicated to easing relations between local authorities, landlords, support providers and clients and providing direct support to sustain tenancies identified as being at-risk. In their recent National Affordable Housing Programme Prospectus the Housing Corporation also encourages providers, where possible, to use general needs properties as move-on accommodation from supported housing.

Rural housing enablers play an important role in identifying the housing needs in their region and it is important for agencies to be able to feed into local housing strategy by engaging with them. They regularly attend regional housing and homelessness forums that are open to local service providers.

"Some people seem to have a concept of affordable housing as being ramshackle, prefab eyesores. Often it's just a case of educating the local community, and the local authority". Housing Quality Manager

English Rural Housing Association is perhaps the best known of a number of registered social landlords who aim to provide affordable housing to people from rural areas, with funding from the Housing Corporation and extensive consultation with rural communities to assess the local housing need. A 2007 Joseph Rowntree report also identified how some local planning authorities have been working to implement affordable housing policies.

Where affordable accommodation is simply not available, alternative types of service may be considered. For instance, supported lodgings services for young people have proved to be particularly successful in a number of areas, and have been supported by local authorities for whom it can reduce the potential cost of emergency accommodation provision. Mendip YMCA, for example, has for some time been running a host family scheme with an established network of local families, and they provide support, including a mediation service, to clients and are available to advise host families if any problems should arise. The mediation service has met with considerable success in resolving housing status for young people, either by resolving issues with families or friends or by helping to find alternative affordable accommodation to move into from the temporary lodging.