The act stipulates that in addition to rough sleepers, local authorities must accommodate vulnerable people leaving council care and former armed forces personnel, among others.
To meet these obligations, the council and Eastleigh Housing Association were to build four hostels using a £500,000 grant from the Housing Corporation's Safer Communities scheme.
But ferocious public opposition to two sites forced councillors to abandon plans to sell them to the association. The city council is working to identify two new sites and has been told by the corporation that it will retain the funding as long as the buildings can be completed by April 2004.
A council spokesman said: "It will be a challenge to build them in a year."
Funding for the two remaining sites is secure and will be sold to Eastleigh Housing Association for construction to start shortly.
With any development the situation can be quite fluid. It doesn’t do to be a pessimist in housing
Patrick Shelley, services director, Eastleigh Housing Association
Patrick Shelley, services director at Eastleigh, said: "With any development the situation can be quite fluid. It doesn't do to be a pessimist in housing. We have been impressed by Winchester; they are looking to the future."
A Housing Corporation spokeswoman would only say that negotiations were "ongoing".
There has been extensive local criticism of the way the council has handled the project. According to the local community, it was left in the dark about details of the tenants to be housed in the four schemes – ex-offenders and teenagers coming out of care.
Locals claimed they thought the four sites were intended for affordable housing, but when it became clear in February that this was not the case, protests and imminent local elections forced the council to abandon two of the proposed sites.
Local resident Jim Cutts accused the council of being "underhand and devious".
Source
Housing Today
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