A London borough has revealed that it will offer homeless people accommodation outside its area, blaming lack of council housing and high rents demanded by private landlords.
Conservative-led Croydon Council said the capping of Local Housing Allowance means that private landlords are refusing to take tenants on housing benefit.
Croydon Council says there was a 36% increase in homeless people in the borough in 2011/12, leading to a huge increase in its use of B&B. Altogether it placed 429 households in B&Bs because of a shortage of private rented accommodation.
The council warned that the planned introduction of the household benefit cap next April – which will cap all the benefits a household can receive at £500 per week – will leave LHA tenants with huge shortfalls.
It said households that have ‘no overriding need’ to be in Croydon may be offered accommodation outside the borough, and that a number of regions had been identified as possibly suitable.
Councillor Dudley Mead, cabinet member for housing, finance and asset management, said: “Unfortunately, it’s an incontrovertible fact that we don’t have enough spare capacity in Croydon for the number of homeless people asking the council for help.
“Obviously, we’d like to be able to offer everybody who comes to us exactly the accommodation, in the area of their choice, they ask for. Sadly, that isn’t possible, and this joint venture with other authorities offers homeless households somewhere to live on a temporary basis.”
Earlier this year, another London council, Labour-run Newham, wrote to around 1,000 housing associations as far away as Stoke-on-Trent in a bid to house 500 families.
As part of the Government’s localism reforms, councils will be able to discharge their duty to homeless people by offering them places in the private rented sector. If households refuse this, the councils are no longer under a duty to find them accommodation.
However, the Government has told councils that it is not acceptable to offer rental accommodation hundreds of miles away.
A consultation is currently taking place, outlining new safeguards for tenants placed in private rental accommodation. Among the safeguards is the need for local authorities to ensure the accommodation has a valid Energy Performance Certificate.
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