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Housing association reaches agreement with charity over homeless centre
Housing association Midland Heart has signed an agreement with a homelessness charity over the future use of one of its buildings after previously intending to evict the organisation.
A row was sparked in 2018 when the 33,000-home landlord told the Hope Centre it had 12 months to vacate Oasis House in Northampton.
The new licence agreement will see the Hope Centre stay in Oasis House, albeit occupying a smaller space, while Midland Heart will deliver 10 new flats in the building.
Midland Heart said it was “delighted to be moving forward in partnership with the Hope Centre to provide even more support to local homeless people”.
But the charity accused Midland Heart of acting to “maximise their income” and claimed the smaller space “has implications for Hope’s work in the longer term and will have effects on the homeless people we serve”.
Oasis House, which opened in 2012 backed by government money, currently provides 48 beds for single homeless people and contains 39 flats, as well as assorted homeless support services.
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Hope runs a day centre for people facing homelessness, an emergency overnight shelter during cold weather and a substance misuse group from the building.
The charity said it will look to find a new base for the longer term and will this year launch a fundraising appeal for the move.
It is understood that the new flats at Oasis House will be the first homeless accommodation to be delivered in Northampton since the building itself, apart from an emergency night shelter opened in 2017.
Rebekah Newton, director of supported and retirement living at Midland Heart, said: “Our new long-term agreement will create an extra 10 apartments to help get even more people off the street, while ensuring the Hope Centre can still provide their services from Oasis House.
“To create these 10 new places for homeless people to live, we have used space that was previously only used for offices and storage, keeping the space the Hope Centre use on weekday mornings free for them during these times.
“We’re glad to be working closely with the Hope Centre to make it possible for us to deliver 10 extra apartments, changing the lives of people in our community who need them the most – that is after all what both the Hope Centre and Midland Heart exist to do.”
Robin Burgess, chief executive of Hope, said: “This licence means Hope loses access to a significant area and has a different entrance, at a time when demand on the service is greater than it has ever been and our service offer has expanded this winter by a factor of more than 100%.
“While this licence enables us to secure our continuing occupancy there for the medium term, the reduced and restricted space we will occupy has implications for Hope’s work in the longer term and will have effects on the homeless people we serve.
“We accept that we will need to find and then move to a building that meets our needs and has sufficient space to accommodate the expanded service we now run.”
