• 0 Posts
  • 3 Comments
Joined 8 months ago
Cake day: June 15th, 2025
  • kip@piefed.ziptoUnited Kingdom@feddit.uk•A new homelessness law in Wales is being called 'world-leading'English
    2·
    2 hours ago

    This is probably, overall, a welcome change. a couple of thoughts:

    The ‘prevention duty’ will increase from 56 days to six months. This gives local authorities much more time to support anyone at risk of homelessness.

    the prevention duty arises from the homeless reduction act 2018. before 56 days are up, a local authority must attempt to prevent or relieve homelessness before it can accept main duty (this is the point where a household is placed into temporary accommodation awaiting an offer of permanent accomm)

    prevention mainly consists of persuading your landlord or family not to kick you out, or finding somewhere else for you to stay before you become actually homeless

    if the 56 days is extended to six months, does this mean an LA must wait that long before accepting main duty? if so expect the homelessness stats to decrease, as nobody is counted as being accepted as homeless before that time is up

    The priority need test and intentionality test – which have excluded people from life-saving support for far too long – will be abolished.

    interesting as the priority need test is essentially are you more vulnerable than the average bloke, practically excluding all street homeless as to meet the test you generally will have to be under 18, very old or ill, or have dependents. this will entitle a large swathe of potential applicants who will previously have been fobbed off to some assisstance, which is good. it will also inevitably attract plenty of chancers who would previously have had no hope of getting anywhere

    will also be interesting to see what removing the intentionality test does. one of the main effects of this was to trip up tenants who thought they were doing the right thing when they received an eviction notice by just leaving their home. seems obvious but if they did this before the landlord got a court order, they could be assessed as intentionally homeless because they left without being forced to do so. another one is about evictions due to rent arrears, where if your bank statements showed you could well have paid the rent if you didn’t spend so much on candy crush powerups etc, you would likely be found intentional

    all in all probably quite a good development, i don’t mind if it lets a few more blaggers through if help is more accessible to those who need it. but i suspect the increase to six months will actually reduce the number of homeless cases who end up being offered council accomm, and just shuffle them around the private rented market. hope to be wrong about that.

    ( quotes from https://thewallich.com/news/homelessness-and-social-housing-allocation-wales-bill/ )