Home and dry

I was up first in topical questions for Communities and Local Government today, and asked about the way in which councils treat applications for rehousing from the homeless, or soon to be homeless. My concern is that councils tell people that they have to hang on until the bitter end and fight legal proceedings they have no chance of winning, before they will be considered homeless. It's not enough for a landlord to serve a notice to quit, or a mortgagee to gain a repossession order. They're meant to hang on until the bailiffs are virtually knocking down the door, and then the Council will swing into action and rehouse them, at very short notice. You can imagine the stress and anxiety that causes families, especially ones with young kids, when they don't know if they'll have a roof over their head in 24 hours time. Or whether it will be a B&B, or somewhere the other side of Bristol, far from the kids' schools. I try to reassure them that the Council will step in, in the end - but I find it hard to explain why they can't do so as soon as the problem arises.

This case study in the Guardian is about a family who were told that because they didn't fight a repossession by their mortgage company they were "intentionally homeless" and the council had no duty to house them. (Although I think I'm right in saying that in families with young children, the housing department might not have a responsibility in such circumstances, but social services do - and they end up stepping in, with much the same outcome as if housing had accepted them).

And I've had people come to see me, whose landlords have a perfectly good reason for wanting them to vacate the property - e.g. if they're selling it - and yet they're told they have to stay put until the landlord takes legal proceedings against them. Sometimes the landlord might even be a personal friend, and neither party wants to go down this route, or incur the costs involved, but the council will treat them as intentionally homeless if they don't put up a show of resistance.

The Minister replied that as soon as the local authority is satisfied that homelessness "is likely within 28 days", it must take steps to ensure that the applicant and his or her household will continue to have somewhere to live. That doesn't quite tie in with what happens in practice, but it gives me a bit of leverage to take this up with the Council.

Repossessions

I was pleased to hear the announcement this week that the Government is to extend the availability of free legal representation at county courts for people who are at risk of having their houses repossessed. I used to work for a small firm of solicitors, who acted as agents in the county courts for the building societies seeking possession orders. This was during the recession of the late 1980s, when repossessions rocketed.

I was based in Luton at the time, which was the negative equity capital of the UK. This was partly because of the large number of starter homes in the town, commissioned by the Tories when they ran the Council, to attract first-time buyers from out of town who wanted somewhere within an easy commute to London and who were more likely to vote Conservative than Luton's traditional car workers. Banks and building societies were offering 100% mortgages, with additional 'cash back' offers. As interest rates rose, and the recession started hitting jobs in the service sector, the new homeowners founded themselves financially over-extended and unable to meet their mortgage payments.

It was my job to handle the court hearings, sometimes at the rate of 10 a day. The homeowners didn't always turn up, but when they did I'd explain to them that although the building society was seeking possession in 30 days, and I would therefore have to go in and ask for that, the court would suspend the order if they made an offer to clear the arrears over a period of time. Very few of the cases ended in actual warrants for possession; the county court registrars understood that people were facing a tough time and I suspect thought the building societies were more than a little to blame for having made the loans in the first place.

The situation now is nowhere near as bad as it was in the late 1980s/ early 1990s, but it's good that the Government is taking early steps to help people keep a roof over their heads.