London Borough of Croydon Home Page

Background

Croydon is London's largest borough with a population of 340,000. It is a place of contrasts: the south is very much leafy suburb wth some areas of great prosperity and exclusive housing, whilst north is more like inner city London with areas of significant deprivation and poor quality private housing. The proportion of social housing is very low for London which, together with increasing house prices and relatively low incomes, has led to high levels of homelessness and very limited means to provide permanent affordable housing.

Croydon's homelessness strategy has led to major reductions in acceptances and temporary accommodation, through prevention work and a full and varied menu of housing options. The number of households approaching the council as homeless has fallen over the last few years, but not greatly compared to the reduction in homelessness acceptances. The number of acceptances has fallen by 75% from 1,267 in 2002/03 to 334 in 2006/07( applicatins fell by less than 10% over this period), and the number of households in temporary accommodation has fallen 40% from 3,600 in January 2005 to 2,100 in March 2007. In particular, bed and breakfast placements have fallen from a high of 575 in 2001 to just 38 now.

Our homelessness strategy involves a combination of different ingredients:

Prevention - we have a package of 14 different initiatives which include family mediation and home visits, asserting tenancy rights in the private sector, floating support/tenancy sustainment, arrears grant fund, Family Justice Centre and Sanctuary Scheme for domestic violence, outreach sessions for schools and community groups, and Private Sector Housing Forums spreading good practice amongst private landlords and protocols covering discharges from institutions. One of the major ways has been finding private rented accommodation for people to move to rather than apply as homeless (433 such placements in total).

Choice-based Allocations system is fair, simple and transparent in order to promote the Housing Register as a route to rehousing (so people wait on the list rather than resort to the homelessness route)and empowering customers to make decisions to increase their housing opportunities.

Target Allocations Policy strategic control of housing allocations secures a balance between competing need groups (in particular to guarantee the credibility of the housing register as a route to rehousing whilst also meeting statutory homelessness duties), uses the transfers effect to acheive a better match between the supply and demand profiles, ensures equal outcomes for disadvantaged groups, and provides clear predictions of waiting times to inform applicant's decisions.

Maximising the supply of social housing - we have traditionally directe the lion's share of capital resources to new social rented supply nd augmented this through various initiatives such as: generous grants to council tenants for buying their own home through the private market, grants to under-occupation council nad housing association tenants who move to smaller homes, the Freshtart scheme to help tenants and homeless people move to low demand parts of the country, and maximising nominations to housing associations.

Restructuring to front-end the service the way in which homeless applicants are now dealt with, that is with a positive focus on prevention and promoting options, has reduced referrals to the Homeless Person section. Meet the Teams

HAP>25 (Housing Advice Project for under-25s), provides a comprehensive one stop shop for young homeless people with the Housing Department, social Services, Connexions, Adolescent Mental Health Service, Youth Offending Team, and the voluntary sector coming together under one roof to provide advice, address underlying issues (e.g. education & training), and provide mediation services. (This project was runner-up in t he London Councils Andy Ludlow Homelessnes Awards).

Homelessness investigations - the development of new initiatives to ensure a thorough assessment of homelessness applications combined with comprehensive training and performance management underlining the important role payed by staff.

Meeting the duty to find settled accommodation through the private sector - Croydon has the best record in the country on the use of private rented housing to discharge the full housing duty to priority homeless households. 130 qualifying offers have been voluntarily accepted.

Our Temporary accommodation-several different schemes have proved attractive to a diverse range of private landlords and property owners and served to maximise our ability to procure good qulatiy homes of the right size and in the areas popular with applicants. these include the Sponsored Tenancy Scheme, which has now placed 1,700 households in the private sector; two market rent schemes providing 150(one of which won the Chartered Institute of Housing Best Funding solution in 2002). Private sector leasing; and rent in advance scheme for single people.

Supported housing for homeless people - good liaison arrangements ensure access to relevant accommodation-based Supporting People-funded services for homeless people, and we have been increasing opportunities for people to move on from short-term schemes into independant housing in both the social and private sectors, often with some floating support in place to help people settle and better guarantee the sustainment of the tenancy.

For more information about Croydon's strategy, email rebeccah.clews@croydon.gov.uk

A copy of Croydon's Homelessness Prevention Manual is available on our website:www.croydon.gov.uk/homelessnessprevention

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