Sheffield woman “told to make herself homeless to get council help”
Sheffield council staff told a woman to make herself homeless so that they could help her out, councillors heard.
The incident was referred to on June 19) at a meeting of Sheffield City Council’s housing policy committee during a discussion of a new temporary accommodation strategy and policy.
A report to the committee said that introducing the strategy will allow the council to have a five-year vision for managing temporary accommodation.
Despite council actions to prevent homelessness and tackle rough sleeping, the amount of people in temporary accommodation has risen in the past two years, said the report, and is part of a national trend.
The council aims to stop using B&Bs as temporary accommodation within two years and offer more suitable alternatives.
Councillors were reminded that they were told last March that without action the number of households in B&Bs could hit 1,300 by 2028. Financial pressures caused by the government only picking up part of the cost of nightly paid accommodation hit £6.2m by March this year.
A review of the service by consultants Campbell Tickell found that more emphasis must be put on preventing homelessness, staff caseloads are too high and high numbers of single people go into temporary accommodation.
Priority
Initial assessment processes are “not sufficiently thorough to determine if there is reason to believe all applicants are either homeless or in priority need before a placement is made”, Campbell Tickell found. The review also said that that cases were not managed consistently with support for people to move on from temporary accommodation.
The strategy aims to address all the issues with new processes and staff training.
Councillor Karen McGowan said there are always rumours that if people say their parents have thrown them out, the council will find them somewhere. She asked how the council mitigates against that.
Head of citywide housing Suzanne Allen responded that the council has a duty to investigate cases, giving people a fair opportunity to explain their circumstances and looking at evidence that supports their case.
“At the point where we allocate temporary accommodation, it’s a very low threshold – all we need to know is that we’ve got reason to believe that someone is eligible for assistance from us – they may be a priority need and they may be homeless,” she said.
Ms Allen said that a full investigation follows after that.
She said that the council is aware of rumours that persist about how to get council help because there is such a severe shortage of housing in the city.
She said the emphasis is on improving the service to help people and prevent homelessness, rather than giving people the impression that if they take certain actions, there will be an outcome.
Terrible
Committee chair Coun Douglas Johnson said that people very rarely make themselves intentionally homeless as homelessness is such a terrible thing to go through.
Coun Paul Turpin said: “I have had two pieces of casework from constituents who have been in a little bit of trouble with their housing. One person was a single parent and their private landlord put their rent up by about 30 per cent and they couldn’t afford it.
“They went into Howden House for help and the staff’s attitude was ‘well, my landlord put my rent up as well’ and then their solution to help this woman out was to tell her ‘make yourself homeless and come back and we can help you’.
“So it’s not just anecdotes or rumours of people trying to get in the system – our own frontline staff are telling people to go and do it. How can we ensure that the officers who are doing the actual work are doing it in the way that is best for the residents and also follows this policy?
“There’s no point having an excellent policy if it’s not being delivered.”
Ms Allen said that was incorrect advice to offer and apologised if it had happened. She said the council has a legal duty to prevent homelessness and will work directly with a landlord to help someone stay in their home wherever possible.
Difficult
She said staff are doing a very difficult job and more support is being put in place to support them, including tackling high caseloads, training and putting in career pathways to help stop high turnover.
Deputy council leader Coun Fran Belbin said that background issues are important, including the need to build more homes in the city.
She said that the impact on people being put in B&Bs, especially families or those fleeing domestic abuse, means more appropriate temporary accommodation must be made available.
Coun Belbin added: “It’s one of our main overspends as a council and that’s something we have to address as well.”
Ms Allen said that some prevention work is being funded by royal foundation Homewards and involves youth housing charity Roundabout going into schools to help young people whose families are at risk of homelessness.
*The Roundabout website says that it supports 380 young people in South Yorkshire aged 16-25 every day. Its services include homelessness prevention, running two hostels in Sheffield and Rotherham, working with young people leaving care to help ensure their smooth transition to independent living and giving support to young people and families who need support to keep their tenancy stable and secure.
To fund out more, including details of their fundraising activities, go online at https://www.roundabouthomeless.org/ or call 0114 253 6789.