The new act has been rightly praised for restoring the duty of councils to provide long-term housing for the homeless, taken away under the last Tory government. Families will have to be moved out of B&Bs in the next two years and vulnerable people such as ex-convicts and 17-year-olds will be eligible for priority housing.
But this will cost London alone £15-20m more a year, money that councils might not be able to provide.
To address these worries, the government can point to an extra £25m it handed out last week to those councils where the problem is most acute. It has also significantly increased levels of housing benefit so that councils can in theory afford to rent out a private house rather than book families into grotty B&Bs. Valuable though this help may be, no one expects it to entirely solve the problem.
It’s a common gripe: good intentions, not enough resources
Again, but on a more muted scale, housing providers support what the Supporting People regime is trying to do – provide a single pot of money to pay for all kinds of intermediate services like counselling and befriending. Again, resources are a big concern.
The new pot has been swamped with bids. In what could be a costly oversight, the government put no ceiling on the amount that councils could claim to cover the costs of support. Claims have varied from as little as £100 to well over £1000 a week, with housing providers readily admitting they are bidding for as much as possible and using the opportunity to try to fund new services.
Of course, no one will complain if the chancellor wants to dig deeper into his pockets. But, when the sums are done again, the chances are there won't be enough money to go round. If that's the case, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister should say so soon rather than waiting until December.
Source
Housing Today
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