The Salvation Army is today saying it will be forced to close its homeless hostels – 6000 rooms because of the Tories LHA Maxima Cap policy – something I said over two years ago and first said over six years ago.

Mitch Menagh, territorial director of homelessness services at The Salvation Army, said: “Sadly we cannot operate our service on the basis of discretionary ‘top-up’ funding, which offers our residents very little financial security.

The above is a quote from Inside Housing today and clearly says that the LHA Maxima Cap policy even with its alleged surety of discretionary commissioning means closure as it is just too high a risk.

Closure of up to 15% of the UK’s homeless provision alone as that is what the SA 6000 rooms equates to – more than the entire UK domestic abuse refuge provision if you want the scale of this to sink in reader. Or about double the entire official rough sleeper count figure in the UK!

I give exact figures for the Sally Army units in Liverpool and anonymised them to show that Anne Conway House for example will have £159.70 per person per week cut which is £6,069 per week and £316k per year TWO YEARS AGO here and I was told I was scaremongering again and the issue was not picked up by the housing sector and its ‘great and good’ – the same who claim to have social purpose coursing through their veins!

I’ve just looked back at that post and a simple table was included for homeless hostels in Liverpool and was immediately followed by :

As this crude table shows the total housing benefit cut just to single homeless services in Liverpool is £2.95 million per year and a cut of 58.7% on average which of course means closure too and also means many providers will have to fold as a great deal of homeless services are provided by small specialist charities and it further means that large homeless charities such as YMCA and Salvation Army will also fold.

I take absolutely no pleasure in saying I told you so; rather, I am angry that it has taken two years for this inevitable and foreseeable catastrophe to reach the attention of the housing sector and their apathy and don’t give a shit attitude as to anything not owned or run by a housing association.

I titled one of my many posts over this and from where the crude table and excerpt come from as “The death of supported and sheltered housing for dummies” in my usual subtle way and yet no challenge to this insane LHA Maxima Cap policy came from the housing sector. I even posted as far back as August 2011 that this policy – in its original form of the July 2011 consultation paper – would close hostels and refuges and this from September 2011 is precisely the same as what the Salvation Army is saying today

Back in September 2011 I modelled some existing provision of clients we have advised and found that reductions of between 24% and 65% of total income would happen – no service can survive such cuts.

I had a go at these national provides too and back in January 2016 in response to the YMCA’s chief executive timidity in responding to yet more government cock-up announcement on this policy as part of a wider post stating that the YMCA would see a £40 million per year cut in Housing Benefit:

A YMCA Statement on the 2 hour debate held this week says

“YMCA is the largest provider of safe, supported accommodation for young people in England, providing almost 10,000 beds every night.“

When this policy was first announced I computed that single homeless services in Liverpool would lose £3 million per year in housing benefit. As part of that YMCA Liverpool would lose £677,000 per year and have to close.

What is bad for the goose is bad for the gander so if the Sally Army is forced to close 6000 rooms of hostel provision will the YMCA be forced to close their 10,000 rooms becomes the question of which the answer has to be yes! And that 10,000 figure is about three times the current official rough sleeper count figure …

Comment

The reason I started blogging back in 2011 was the Tories original version of their LHA Maxima Cap policy which meant cuts of between 24% and 65% in revenue funding to the hostel and refuge providers I advised. It meant inevitable closure then just as it does now and this original policy was vigorously challenged and was dropped. It resurfaced from the Tories – and in a worse form! – in 2015 and it wasn’t challenged by the leading supported housing providers in the housing associations because its umbrella body in the National Housing Federation (NHF) had bigger fish to fry with the Tory government and had a “critical friend” relationship with it.

The NHF were focusing on the RTB extension to housing associations and having their ONS status reclassified as private and many other bigger apparent issues for HA bottom lines. That apathy and silence has directly led to the massive widespread closure of hostel and refuge provision this unchallenged policy will bring. Recently and after any alleged consultation was long closed the NHF have issued a series of faux outrage papers as to the impact on sheltered housing and specifically how new units will not be built and, scandalously, not comment as to how existing sheltered housing tenants will be shafted in significant terms.

Between the two incarnations of this policy the Tories have bought the NHF silence with “affordable (sic) rent” and the RTB charade and many other policies that all increase the HA bottom lines and their chief executives personal remunerations and taken away oversight and scrutiny of HAs amongst other policies in return for the silence and apathy … and even when that means the closure of hostel provision.

The gagging of charities and perhaps the C of E underpinnings of the Salvation Army and YMCA seeing them placated by the Tory party at prayer elements among their boards and trustees have seen the same apathy and silence from these nationwide providers – who in any case are still the small and easy targets for Government to attack. Who knows maybe a deal was struck for this NHF silence and apathy by the two former largest supported housing providers in Stonham and ECHG … who were both taken over by large housing associations (Home Group and Riverside) and to the victor the spoils will ensue?

Just thing all that prime real estate going cheap, and prime because hostels are often situated in city centre locations due to their proximity to town halls and their homeless departments. They would readily convert to luxury apartments or even student accommodation or other uses in the obsession we have over maximising bricks and mortar and not giving a fuck about who used to live in such properties. The cost of everything yet value of nothing is very much at play here!

How coincidental that we have a Homelessness Reduction Bill (HRB) shortly to become statute that allegedly gives single homeless persons more rights and imposes greater duties on local authorities … at the same time that single homeless provision all but disappears due to this (unchallenged) LHA Maxima Cap policy!!

Oh where is the outrage by Shelter and Crisis and others about this you say? They were all too busy lobbying for the HRB and advocating Housing First models which cost twice as much per hour to operate and become yet another vanity project of those who like to be seen to be doing something from their ivory towers!

Still, at least its only a small change to the livery of those who promote the failure that is NSNO as it becomes NSYO – No Second Year Out from no second night – and all those wonderfully well-intentioned advocates also let the Tories LHA Maxima Cap policy go unchallenged and slip under their altruistic radar too!!

Though some of these well-intentioned, upstanding and altruistic civil leaders in the regions have sought to criminalize rough sleepers and label them all as professional beggars in order to hide the failure of the NSNO policy and their heavy political support for it. In London the budget holders simply get the rough sleeping funding recipients to blame it all on eastern Europeans in an overtly fascistic and racist way …. and then make Louise Casey a Dame for this failure by the former rough sleeper czar and originator of the equally discredited Troubled Families programme!

Yes reader you will see thousands more sleeping rough on our streets and a huge increase in those being women and you will be asking why is nothing being done about this rather than how did this happen and as you can see from the above I have been telling you this will inevitably happen with the insane ideological basis of this Tory policy for the last 6 years or more. Get a job you lazy bastards is the Tories line and who the hell cares that the least deserving of the lot in these drug and alcohol addicts who populate homeless hostels (blah, blah, blah) as we know the public don’t!

Let’s reclaim the prime real estate these ‘lifestyle choice’ ne’er do wells now live in and make some short term filthy lucre out of those properties. Nobody will give a political shit about shafting the ‘great unwashed!’ …and if they do they will blame the local authority not central government so a win-win all round!

Machiavelli was a rank amateur compared to the Tories reader. You what? I haven’t spelled out what will happen to the 36,000 current single hostel dwellers who equate to almost ten times the current official rough sleeping count figures?

That’s obvious but hey who gives a fuck!

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The Salvation Army project called Anne Conway House currently receives £250.60 per week in eligible Housing Benefit. This is by right and only after severe scrutiny of all costs under HB regulations. It will reduce to the 1 bed Local Housing Allowance rate in Liverpool of £90.90 and a loss of 64% which becomes wholly discretionary for the local council to commission the service or not.

Anne Conway House as at Sept 2016 from Mainstay directory:

By contrast a single person in London where the 1 bed rate can be £260+ per week and with no support needs whatsoever and no furnishings and no staff in attendance and paying their own water rates etc, etc will still get the £260+ per week in housing benefit for the dingiest grottiest 1 bed property. This is the Tories idea of fairness and equity – go figure!

Those inner London rates: As you can see the £260.64 per week would pay for and make no difference to the £250.60 per week rate for Anne Conway House in Liverpool