Two charities for vulnerable people with a combined annual income of £16m have warned they face closure as a result of changes to social housing benefits announced in last year’s Autumn Statement.
Transform Housing and Support and Langley House Trust, have both said they fear closure because of the changes, which will reduce the amount the government will pay to house vulnerable people in refuge accommodation.
The concerns were made public by Tom Brake, Liberal Democrat MP for Carshalton and Wallington (pictured), who warned that more charities housing vulnerable people “feared closure over the cuts to housing benefit”.
Claire Burton, head of business development for Langley House Trust – a charity that provides housing for ex-offenders - said the proposed cuts to rental income could have a “devastating impact”.
“The changes to housing benefit in their purest form are significant enough that many smaller housing charities will be forced to stop supporting their vulnerable tenants or close down altogether due to lack of resources,” Burton told Civil Society News.
“Larger charities will have to shrink considerably and stop any house building programmes that they were undertaking as after 2018 their rent payments will become unsustainable,” she said.
Burton confirmed that Langley House Trust would also be affected by the changes “depending on the response of the Government to the request to protect supported housing from the reforms”.
The charity has urged people to write to their local MPs to ask them to “do what they can to ensure that housing providers such as Langley House Trust are exempt from these severe cuts”.
Burton’s comments were echoed by the chief executive of Transform Housing and Support, Paul Mitchell, who said the proposed cap on social rents “threatened to close supported housing for vulnerable people across the UK”.
Charities affected by the cuts would include those offering supported housing to people with support needs, such as mental health issues, young people leaving care or those who are at risk of homelessness, Mitchell said.
“Transform is working hard to bring the unintended consequences of these changes to the attention of the Government and to seek exemption for supported housing schemes,” she said.
Last week Scottish MP for Airdrie and Shotts and cabinet secretary for social justice, Alex Neil, warned that the changes to social housing benefits could have a “catastrophic impact” on women’s refuges.
Refuges have been "left in an unacceptable state of uncertainty" as a result of proposals which would reduce the amount of housing benefit cash they receive, he told the Herald Scotland on Sunday.
"This proposal is essentially a cap to the amount of housing benefit housing social and council tenants will receive, and, what's still not clear is how far this cap will go when it comes to the most vulnerable living in refuge accommodation,” he said.
A spokeswoman for Scottish Women’s Aid told the Evening Times, the cap on social housing rents could result in an annual loss of thousands of pounds for each of its centres and “have a devastating impact on the future provision of refuge accommodation in Scotland, where all refuge accommodation is in the ownership of either housing associations or local authorities''.
Tom Brake MP and Women’s Aid Scotland were approached by Civil Society News for comment but did not respond by the time of going to press.
