Comments on: Degrees of Homelessness?

By: Nearly Legal

Nearly Legal — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 19:05:53 +0000

Deborah - I’ve replied by email.

By: Deborah Taylor

Deborah Taylor — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 11:56:05 +0000

We were given a section 184 by Redditch Council on 30/4/2008 due to medical grounds. In fact the property is in a serious state of dis-repair, though this is not mentioned. A recent surveyors report states the problems to the property.
Despite my continual complaining because I am registered disabled and we are all sleeping in one room, due to the extent of mould growth and damp, this council has left us to live like this because we have asked to be referred to another area. No offer of temporary accomadation has been given to us and we have been told we have to wait. I cannot find a solicitor to take this on, can anyone help us please?

By: Jay

Jay — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:17:30 +0000

This makes for a very interesting read. My relative is at present classed by Bham as homeless and remains in her home with two young children. Her homeless situation has arisen from the harassment of her next door neighbour’s and their visitors. She has only just received the outcome of her appeal/review and again being offered a totally unacceptable property. This is after a 5 month wait….

Family and friends are left to pound the pavements looking for some kind of legal advice and support for her.

By: Birmingham v Aweys at Nearly Legal

Birmingham v Aweys at Nearly Legal — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:31:55 +0000

[...] apparently intent on suicide, appealed the judicial review decision in Aweys. Birmingham City Council v Abdishakur Aweys & Ors [2008] EWCA Civ 48. They lost, [...]

By: They’ll have to wait at Nearly Legal

They’ll have to wait at Nearly Legal — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 22:51:01 +0000

[...] tonight. Meh. I’m sure you can wait 24 hours or so. Tomorrow, maybe the day after. But then Aweys v Birmingham has a Court of Appeal judgment due any day (what the hell were Birmingham appealing?) which [...]

By: contact

contact — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 20:14:38 +0000

Mike, many thanks for the detailed comment, very useful.

The gatekeeping issue has suddenly become relevant again in my area of London. There are strong rumours that one of the large authorities is adopting precisely the ‘filtering homeless apps though housing advice’ technique that Birmingham tried. No doubt we will end up with the same problem of JR applications being picked off one by one before hearing.

By: Mike McIlvaney

Mike McIlvaney — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:29:03 +0000

What we tried to draw the Court’s attention to in the Aweys case was the “triple whammy” effect of B’ham’s housing policies:

1.operating apolicy of refusing to accept Pt7 applications and instead requiring an applicant to go through “Home Options” interviews which acted as institutionalised gatekeeping;

2.if an application was accepted (often under threat of proceedings) it would find that it was reasonable for a person to remain in their “homeless at home” accommodation pending allocation;

3.homeless at home people were given an inferior banding with little prospect of such an allocation.

The effect was that the whole process conspired against the applicant. In Mr Aweys’ case he suffered whammy (1). Then under threat of proceedings the council took an application but determined (incredibly) that he was not homeless. He was then accepted after launch of s202 county court appeal proceedings before then sufferring whammy (2) and (3).

This was a typical, bloodboiling, scenario in Bham with the council picking off individual cases. The challenge in Aweys took months of coordination. All 7 cases were launched together (there were others that were picked off shortly before issue). We amassed a good deal of anecdotal evidence regarding the council’s practices. Over the Christmas preceding the January hearing Bham attempted to “gift” offers to the applicants but failed to resolve the claims (which we would have endeavoured to continue anyway).
Bringing the cases was not easy and (to touch upon what another correspondent raised) what is very disconcerting at the moment is the situation regarding legal aid and the future landscape. As housing advice suppliers continue to slide away so the scope for the continuation or resurfacing of unlawful practice increases.
Sorry for this belated comment but I’ve only today been introduced to the site.

Mike Mcilvaney, The Community Law Partnership.

By: contact

contact — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 10:48:14 +0000

A very useful comment, thank you. London Councils tend to be better behaved these days because they have been repeatedly judicially reviewed. They are also wise to backing down on individual cases to stop the JR as well. But in areas without housing solicitors…

Birmingham’s behaviour as set out in Aweys was actually even worse than it appeared in the report. The unappealed portion of the first judgment was on their gatekeeping practices - refusing to accept a homeless application unless the person had first been through their housing advice team. A lot of people were stopped at that hurdle. This was declared unlawful and not appealed.

Welcome to Nearly Legal, by the way.

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 00:32:43 +0000

A not very well publicised aspect council housing is the sheer number of local authorities who still operate unlawful allocation policies. Aweys is yet another judgement addressing the failure of a council to give lawful effect to the reasonable preference categories.

As a housing paralegal I still come across councils operating blanket exclusion policies which were outlawed by the Homelessness Act 2002 (applicants being told they can’t apply for a council home because they have former tenancy arrears or because don’t live in the council’s district). This despite the fact it is over 4 years since the 2002 Act amendments were brought into force.

In Wales the failure by most of the 22 councils to implement lawful waiting list policies caused the Ombudsman to issue a special report (http://www.ombudsman-wales.org.uk/content.php?nID=12;lang=1;pID=76) in February 2006. There then followed a review by the National Assembly’s Housing Directorate of the progress made by councils in amending allocations policies.

However, the courts still remain the principal means by which unlawful policies can be changed. I agree that it is very puzzling that Birmingham thought they could successfully defend this case. One can’t help but wonder about the incompetents running their legal department. They do not appear to appreciate that the ‘best’ (i.e. most cynical but neverthess effective) approach in holding onto these unlawful policies is to back down and house the individual applicants upon being threatened with judicial review proceedings in the hope that they don’t proceed to get a judgement.

Whilst one sympathises with the very difficult job local authorities have in rationing access to the diminishing resource that is social housing, councils retain considerable discretion in how their waiting list rules are formulated. In other words they can make the changes required by the legislation and still have some leeway to give effect to locally determined priorities. There really are no excuses for the approach taken by Birmingham.