Happy house waitinglist5/31/2023 ![]() The car park and a patch of grass next to an existing sheltered housing development has been identified as a location for three two-bedroom bungalows. It is spending £5.5m on new homes, topped up with £2m from the Greater London Authority. Rather than begin a major new home-building programme, Havering prefers infilling existing plots and ensuring the mix of homes is right. ![]() "They can't heat it, they can't maintain it, the neighbour complains that the garden is not being looked after," she says. Downsizing would be a win-win says Kelly. The area has an older population than the rest of London, and the council believes some are in homes better suited to families, and is trying to entice them to move. Under-occupation of large homes by older residents is one of the main problems the council has identified. "My theory is we have got enough housing in Havering, we've just got the wrong people living in the wrong homes," she says. The fact that councils need to choose between people who typically all have fair reasons for being on the waiting list, highlights the urgent need to build more affordable homes."īut in Havering, councillor Kelly rejects the idea that there is a problem with the supply of homes. "It could be a disability leaving you unable to work, or high private rents outstripping your wages. "There are any number of reasons why you might need a council home," says Roger Harding, Shelter's director of communications. The move has been contested by the Local Government Association, while housing charity Shelter says that decisions to restrict lists underline the need for more homes. The housing minister, Kris Hopkins, told the Guardian that the new guidance was "to ensure that people in need of social housing with a long-standing connection to the area, or who have served in the armed forces, are prioritised". The Secretary of State believes that a reasonable period of residency would be at least two years." ![]() The guidance said: "The Secretary of State believes that including a residency requirement is appropriate and strongly encourages all housing authorities to adopt such an approach. Other changes excluded households who were able to live with their family.Īt the end of 2013, the government gave councils statutory guidance on waiting lists, making it clear that it believed they should be looking at applicants' links with an area. "We felt that it was more honest to tell people that they had no chance, and should concentrate their efforts on finding private rented accommodation, rather than bidding pointlessly for properties that they would not be able to get," said Lesley Kelly, the Conservative councillor with responsibility for housing in the borough. Havering, which used to allow people to apply for a council home if they had lived in the area for six months, has changed that to two years. Hammersmith has imposed a rule that people must live in the area for at least five years before they can apply for a council house. Instead, local authorities are writing to applicants telling them that they no longer stand a chance of obtaining a home from the council unless they meet new local criteria. Behind the extraordinary collapse in waiting lists is not a sudden surge in the supply of council homes.
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