You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles
If we’re not housing homeless people, who will? Why Sanctuary scrapped affordability tests
Affordability testing proved bureaucratic and stressful, so our approach is to offer tenancy support and not turn people away, writes Craig Moule
There’s been some debate in the sector recently about who we should be housing and whether ‘riskier’ tenants need additional checks before being let a home. The Chartered Institute of Housing’s publication of the Rethinking Allocations report brought this to the fore.
Housing associations may have different origins but the thing that unites us is our social purpose. If we are not housing homeless people, who will?
Pre-tenancy assessments can be sensible and help us work out how best we can support a tenant to sustain their tenancy, but they should never be about denying someone in need of a home.
READ MORE
At Sanctuary, we used to carry out affordability checks but we quickly realised they were stressful for applicants and, as we never turned anyone down as a result, they were pointless bureaucracy for us, so we scrapped them.
Getting rid of any kind of financial hoop-jumping for tenants has reduced our business risk. It has got rid of unnecessary administration, freeing up staff time to work with tenants proactively to start their tenancies on a positive footing.
We can offer tenancy support in a range of forms: budget setting, benefits signposting, comparing utility providers, job coaches, additional settling-in chats, and digital inclusion projects – all available if people want it and not if they don’t.
And for the tenants most in need, we give them a bit of breathing space for the first four to six weeks of moving into their home to ensure they access the benefits available to them in order to sustain their tenancies.
It also means we let our homes faster, which is better for tenants because they are in their new home quicker and better for us because it reduces the rent lost when properties are empty.
We were proud to have signed up to Homes for Cathy, an alliance of housing associations, charities and local authorities working together to end homelessness, because the commitments naturally fit with our approach.
Homes for Cathy calls for all of us working in the housing sector to question whether we are doing enough to live out our charitable social purpose in our day-to-day work.
Sanctuary manages 100,000 homes across England and Scotland, in hundreds of local authorities with many different allocations policies and lettings schemes. Managing a large number of homes in such a diverse range of locations means that we have to be driven by our values.
Our social purpose should not be a point of debate – it’s what we do.
Craig Moule, chief executive, Sanctuary Group
