MHCLG’s Housing First pilot – A (non) evaluation charade of 3 (non) Housing First pilots

This week saw published a 68-page evaluation (sic) report into the three large-scale Housing First model pilots in England. Sixty-eight pages of pathetic scrutiny and little if any robust analysis of the three pilots making this official report largely purposeless.

Evaluation? (My Arse!)

The report has the title of second evaluation report yet nothing in this report that was completed in March 2021 yet only released 4 months later at the end of July 2021 is evaluated. The cost of delivering Housing First is not attempted for example despite the extrapolation of its support element being £184 per hour as I detailed here that renders these pilots as impossibly not sustainable. Neither for that matter is there an evaluation of whether the Housing First pilots are actually Housing First model services, which they are not!

In short this is a sham of a report about a set of three sham pilot programmes that will at some not so distant point give Government all the cause they need to conclude that reducing never mind eliminating rough sleeping is impossible. Government have thrown oodles of funding at the panacea that the homeless ‘experts’ said would work when it cannot possibly do so and soon to be followed by withdrawing all funding for the intractable and ‘unsolvable’ rough sleeping services and no doubt blaming the poor bastards who are roofless.

The Housing First model, as its name implies, is entirely 100% dependent upon the availability of the housing element, the elusive one-bedded property, being available and on an immediate basis yet all this official MHCLG commissioned report said on the matter was that it took between 1 week and 12 months for the critical one-bedded HF property to be found. No further evaluation is attempted in this sham MHCLG report of THE most critical aspect of the Housing First model!!

The Housing First model and theory has a non-contentious definition below and taken from an April 2020 report into 20 years of the Housing First model in the USA where the model originated which says that (a) permanent housing is (b) provided immediately and (c) on an unconditional basis, irrespective of the sobriety or other complex support need that the homeless applicant has or had.

It can take a year to find a suitable permanent one-bedded HF property which makes the ‘Housing FIRST’ nomenclature and label a charade and impossibility in England.

Now go back to the one week to 12 months off-hand language in the excerpt above and look at this language emphasised in another aspect that some of the purportedly Housing First clients had been accommodated in temporary accommodation first!

This means the three purported Housing First pilots are a staged resettlement model akin to a hostel first stage and then a second ‘move-on’ stage. As such they are not Housing First models at all and by any definition of the Housing First model.

The English large-scale “Housing First” pilot programmes in the Metro Mayor areas of Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region and West Midlands Combined Authority are de facto NOT the “Housing First” model at all but resettlement models that do not (a) provide the housing firstly, and (b) do not feature unconditionality and (c) are not provided immediately and (d) only achieve permanent housing on a staged basis.

Irrespective of the well-known acute shortage of one-bedded permanent properties in England owned and managed by the social rented sector – the only provider of permanent housing as the private rented sector does not – the pilots are a lie and deceit when they claim to be the Housing First model. Its associated zealous claims that the Housing First model is a panacea to end rooflessness (rough sleeping) and the scant data that this official MHCLG commissioned report does include, has data revealing just 72 of 199 of the HF pilot clients housed were sleeping rough immediately prior to acceptance onto these three pilot schemes.

Figure 8 of this report in which the authors CHOSE to only delineate 199 HF service users and not the 534 total that were housed is as suspicious as it gets. There is no narrative as to why these details were released based on just 199 HF clients and not on the 534 total HF clients housed.

It reveals that 36% or just 72 of these carefully selected 199 HF clients were roofless – the correct term for rough sleeping – in the one month period prior to acceptance on these three faux Housing First pilots. All of the other categories of person had a roof in the month before their (conditional) acceptance onto these faux Housing First pilot schemes whether emergency provision, hostels, sofa surfing, prison etc.

The Housing First zealous advocates and promoters have done the Westminster Government up like a kipper. We have this wonderful model they say, which is a ‘success’ elsewhere – a point never substantiated with any data or evidence by the way, that will eliminate rough sleeping yet by choosing almost 2 in every 3 Housing First clients as NOT being rough sleepers to reduce the rough sleeper count they have lied to Government. That assumes the 36% of all 534 acceptees onto these faux Housing First schemes or 192 of them were similarly roofless in the month before. However, this evaluation report does not give the full number of roofless persons accepted onto these schemes and instead CHOOSES to mention it for just 199 acceptees!

It could be way more than 36% or it could be way lower and again shows how purposeless and deficient this claimed evaluation report is!

We have this wonderful model they assert as mantra that is incredibly cost-effective in reducing rough sleeping these zealous advocates asserted, yet the cost of providing one hour of visiting support to those that have been housed works out at £184 for each hour of support per person … and just another issue the MHCLG commissioned light touch report failed to look at!

The English Housing First advocates however go way beyond zealous to be revealed in this report as a doctrinaire cult by recruiting only those support workers who have ‘bought into’ the brainwashing English version of the Housing First (sic) cult.

The priority in recruiting staff for the pilots is how easily they could be indoctrinated with the illusory theory of the Housing First model, which these pilots clearly do NOT operate, rather than for their experience and expertise in supporting vulnerable homeless persons with their many support needs.

Is it any wonder that these pilots who were supposed to accommodate and support 1000 former rough sleepers have failed and merely housed barely half at 534 of which we must assume some two-thirds were NOT sleeping rough immediately prior to moving onto these faux Housing First pilots?

The extremely light touch report reveals many shocking things yet fails to comment upon them.

The £28 million of funding for the 3 pilots was in May 2018 yet the GM pilot housed its first client in March 2019 and 10 months later, the LCR pilot housed its first client in July 2019 and 14 months later, and the WMCA pilot its first in January 2019 some 8 months later, and from a pre-existing HF low scale service. These facts raise the logical and bloody obvious questions of: –

1. What was the funding spent on in the 8 – 14 months it took to house the first client?
2. Why the hell did it take this long to house the first clients?

These highly pertinent and obvious questions and points of enquiry are not discussed or revealed in this purposeless light touch report.

In order to keep this to a readable length I will bullet point some other aspects.

• Why do the authors of this report mistakenly call housing associations ‘registered provider?’ – The term means public sector council landlords only and housing associations are correctly termed Private Registered Providers to reflect their non-public sector status.
• How can the reports narrative be one of surprise that inter-agency cooperation with single homeless persons is fraught as it has been for at least the last 30 years?
• Similar ‘surprise’ is found in the narrative that (admittedly underfunded and overworked) mental health services refuse to assess homeless persons and frequently cite drug-induced psychoses and not underlying mental health problems all without undertaking an assessment?
• Further surprise is found in the narrative that other statutory providers, eg Probation, withhold full risk assessments on potential HF clients in order to practise social dumping?

All the above bullet points suggest and strongly that the MHCLG appointed consultants who undertook this evaluation knew nothing of the standard and unacceptable practises that have been the norm in the rehousing of all single homeless persons for many decades – which the surprised narrative tone reveals.

Further, this reveals that the HF pilot lead organisations were incredibly ill-prepared and gave scant consideration if any at all to these obvious and well-known operational constraints that have been the norm for decades in the rehousing of single homeless persons.

That latter point appears to be have been belatedly addressed by partnering with expert homeless organisations to make up for the mistake of the primacy of indoctrinating inexperienced staff in naive recruitment practices over experienced homeless support workers who have known of these constraints and outrageous practices of denying mental health assessments and of social dumping practices for decades when the HF lead organisations like the author expresses surprise at these norms.

Finally, as I have implied in this shortish piece, rebuttal and informed response to this 68-page official (non) evaluation report could easily by 168 pages long such is the purposeless of this ‘report’ with its chronic lack of any never mind robust enquiry.

Single homeless persons deserve far, far better than this non-entity of scrutiny report is into these errantly labelled ‘Housing First’ pilots.

£184 p/h Housing First pilots visiting support cost

What is the cost of one hour of visiting support under the Housing First model?

£184 – Yes that does say ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY FOUR POUNDS!

Surely that must be absurdly false? No it isn’t as this brief post explains.

The three large-scale Housing First pilots have provided 534 complex need homeless persons with 162,750 nights of visiting support which gives this average support only cost of £184 per person per night and which excludes rent cost.

The official evaluation report released by MHCLG on 28 July does not give any breakdown of cost or any accurate breakdown on the length of tenancy sustainment for the HF pilots. However, we know the 3 pilots were granted £28 million of funding and the LCR pilot had an additional £1.7m of Homeless Trailblazer Funding so I am working on a total funding for the 3 pilots of not less than £30 million which is cautiously low as it is likely the GM and WM pilots also had additional funding streams and all three pilot areas could additionally have in-house combined authority funding as well.

In short £30 million is a very cautious total funding figure for the support only of HF pilot clients.

The evaluation report is vague on tenancy duration (and deliberately so?) and merely places the length of HF tenancy duration into very broad bands which I reproduce below: –

Using the mid point of each band so “up to 1 month” is 15 days and “1 – 6 months” being 91 days and so on we find that a total duration of the 534 HF clients is 162,750 days and nights for an average of 304 nights each HF client housed and 43 weeks and 3 days. By dividing the cautious £30 million support only HF cost (rent is additional) by 162,750 nights we see the support only cost for each Housing First pilot client housed equates to £184.33 per day per person.

• 42 housed HF clients at < 1 month = 42×15 = 630 days
• 169 at 1 – 6 months is 169×91 days = 15,379 days
• 148 at 6-12 months is 148×272 days = 40,256 days
• 149 at 1 – 2 years is 149×548 days = 81,652 days
• 26 at 2 – 3 years is 26×913 days = 23,738 days
• 1 at 3 years is 1×1095 days = 1,095 days

The total housed days / nights of the 534 HF clients housed using these mid-point figures is 162,750 which gives an average duration of tenure at 305 days and by dividing the £30 million funding for support by 162,750 total support days gives a daily cost of housed support to be £184.33 per person receiving housed support.

Quad erat demonstrandum

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Further comment

There is nothing wrong with the arithmetic above and as I always say 2 plus 2 always equals 4, which it does.

The £30 million figure is a cautious one for the total funding of these pilots however the support cost is only for the 59% of HF clients who were actually housed and it excludes the costs of providing pre-tenancy support to the total 902 persons ‘recruited’ by the HF pilot teams. Conversely, the cost figures do NOT include rent costs and so the overall housign and support costs per person and per day will be higher than the £184 pppd support only cost.

However, the HF model is, in its theory, the immediate housing of persons with no conditionality or assessment of client support needs prior to housing. The clients are housed first and immediately and then support is delivered yet this is NOT the case with the 3 pilots who have filtered out hundreds of prospective clients are not being suitable or not meeting the correct ‘conditionality’ of this supposedly unconditional Housing First model.

An April 2020 research report into 20 years of the Housing First model in the USA gave a very concise and apt description on the HF model and its tenets:

The Manhattan Institute (US think tank) report concludes that Housing First does not work and is not cost-effective and twenty years of the HF model for example has seen the homeless numbers in New York increase from 33,000 to over 78,000.

All of these same conclusions are borne out in the MHCLG incredibly light-touch evaluation for the comparatively embryonic HF pilot models in England with 3 years of history vis-a-vis 20 years history in the USA. The 534 who have been housed will contain the same small number of “high utilizer” homeless people which in the UK we label very high complex need and which many have been weeded out of the 3 English pilots and not permitted access to the HF schemes as their needs are too high.

I will summarise by saying the 3 large-scale purportedly HF pilot schemes are NOT the HF model or theory and that the 3 English pilots are botched together hotchpotch of service models which include outreach (pre housing) and also versions of the staged resettlement models such as hostels. The 3 pilots despite the very light touch MHCLG commissioned evaluation report are also doctrinaire by design and so much so that support staff are chosen only if they ‘buy in’ to the incredibly superficial HF theory and for which the report narrates that external scrutiny ofthese pilots HF ‘fidelity’ is given greater priority than supporting individual tenant support needs. This is one example of the many overbearing top-down doctrinaire HF pilot structures which jump off the page despite the MHCLG report being overtly vague and overtly light touch and have an absence of primary data upon which to comment fully and assess these HF pilots in the detail they and single homeless persons deserve.

The HF pilots in England do however give enough urgent cause for concern over costs and operational practise and the support costs especially give cause for an immediate thorough investigation and similar to ones that all local authorities had with the Supporting People Audit Commission investigations of 2003 – 2006.

The faux HF models of the pilots require robust external investigation and immediately so as the pilots are seeking continuation funding and the zealous HF advocates are demanding HF is scaled up from circa 2000 persons today to 16,450 persons. To do either without a robust investigation would in common paralance be spaffing taxpayers money up the wall and, far more importantly, setting up MORE homeless persons up to fail in a system that due to its costs can never be financially sustainable.

MHCLG report finds Housing First costs DOUBLE what Crisis claim. Oh dear!!

The minimum Housing First yearly cost per person is DOUBLE the figure that Crisis the homeless organisation and prime supporter of Housing First say it is.

The official MHCLG report puts the Housing First per person per year housed cost at a minimum of £18,726 (excluding rent cost) and the Crisis ‘report’ of last week asserts this excluding rent cost figure to be just £9,683.

Today I have been reading the Second Process Evaluation of the Housing First Pilots, the official report published yesterday by MHCLG. This concerns the three large-scale Housing First pilots in Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region and the West Midlands (GM, LCR, WM) and its 68 pages make very sobering reading indeed. The same old practical and cultural barriers and problems exist as I first encountered in single homelessness almost 30 years ago and ever since and the same very vulnerable individual needs are manifest in the 534 complex need clients that have been rehoused across the 3 pilot areas in the last three years.

The MHCLG official report from which the above 534 housed figure comes is an extremely depressing read though a necessary one and most depressing of all is the Housing First models (note plural) engaged variously across the 3 areas will not or ever work due to the elephant in the room which is always the bottom-line cost … which is DOUBLE the cost of that asserted last week by Crisis in a ‘report’ alluding to be for the APPG Homeless cross party group for which Crisis provides the secretariat.

The MHCLG report reveals 534 HF clients have been housed in the 3 pilots and have come at an agrregate cost of not less than £10 million per year and note that figure excludes the housing rent cost. It equates at the lowest cost to £360 per person per week excluding rent and that excludes the cost of statutory services delivered to the Housing First clients.

It is an unsustainable cost to the public purse and no government of any persuasion will pay that cost, just as they have been unwilling to pay that cost for the last 30 years. Even if all the inevitably predicted practical problems such as the chronic undersupply of the one-bedded properties upon which the Housing First model(s) is 100% dependent magically arose up out of the ether to provide the housing firstly, then the ongoing cost of providing the support services is never going to materialise.

Number and cost crunching

The 3 pilots were granted £28 million from the government over a three year period and additional millions have been claimed in Homeless Trailblazer Funding (HTF) that means the three years to date have seen well over £30 million directly spent on these pilots or not less than £10 million per year on average.

The LCR service alone had £1.7m of HTF (over 2 years) and that funding level of not less than £30m over 3 years (which excludes any additional in-house funding) has seen 534 persons with what we cursorily label ‘complex needs’ housed in their own property for varying lengths of time ranging from less than one month to 1 person for over three years.

IF all 534 had been housed for three years which they haven’t at a cost of £30 million the support cost per person would be £18,726 per year and £360 per week PLUS rent cost. Simple arithmetic sees dividing £10 million by 534 recipients to be this £18,726 per person per year.

This £360 per person per week plus rent costs is thus the lowest possible cost of these pilots and is not sustainable. It we say £90 per week rent cost then this is £450 per person per week as a very low cost per person PLUS the additional cost of statutory services as the Housing First model brings additional clients to statutory services that were previously not supported or paid for by mental health and other services.

I make no apologies for focusing on the costs as the bottom line is the only thing that matters to government funders. It is always the primary concern and the secondary concern is whose budget does it come from.

We see the MHCLG external evaluation finds that the Crisis report published last week that asserted the Housing First cost per person at £9,683 per year (excluding rent cost) was barely half of the true cost which at the lowest is the £18,726 per person per year (also excluding rent cost) and the real minimum cost of the Housing First model is DOUBLE the cost that Crisis assert it to be!

Housing First INCREASES rough sleeping numbers.

The Housing First model even when ‘scaled-up’ to 16,450 clients as its advocates led by Crisis demand will only ever eliminate 11% of rough sleeping in England. That means 89 out of every 100 rough sleepers in England will not get any support to end their roofless state under the Housing First model.

This is just one of the many known and provable problems with the incredibly moralistic and superficial Housing First model and theory and why it can only ever be a tiny bit-part of eliminating rough sleeping which is a subset of single homelessness accounting for a single figure percentage of single homeless persons in England.

1. Housing First can only be 11% of the solution

Currently around 2000 persons are supported by the Housing First model as a ‘report’ from Crisis revealed last week here. The same ‘report’ reasserted the claimed need for 16,450 Housing First caseload first revealed in a Centre for Social Justice think tank report “Close to Home” authored by Sarah Rowe of Crisis revealed here. This 16,450 is a finite capacity and the aim is Housing First support to delivered to each former rough sleeper for an average three-year period. This means the 16,450 capacity is finite and a maximum constant for three years.

However, in any three-year period England and the English systems creates 150,000 rough sleepers and 50,000 rough sleepers each and every year. The 16,450 finite and maximum HF caseload is thus 11% of the rough sleeper total number.

The 16450 finite capacity of Housing First also meand Crisis and the hard right-wing CSJ think tank believe 89% of rough sleepers need no support whatsoever in order to transition from the street and sustain a tenancy on their own!!

The Crisis APPG Homeless sham report

2. Does England have 50,000 rough sleepers each and every year?

Yes. Every method used to calculate the yearly number of rough sleepers in England arrives at a consistent minimum of 50,000 each year. For example the CHAIN data which is the only year round and yearly count of rough sleepers revealed London has over 11,000 rough sleepers in a year. The one-off rough sleeper count that is conducted on one night per year, noting that in 68% of local authorities no count was undertaken and replaced with a desktop estimate, has consistently revealed London has between 21% and 22% of all rough sleepers in England. A simple extrapolation sees 11,000+ CHAIN data number for London equating to over 50,000 for an All England figure. There are many other simple ways to arrive at this minimum 50,000 pa figure which I detailed here.

3 Housing First is a “success” and/or Housing First “works”

These claims are regularly stated by HF advocates so much so they become a mantra. However, they are semantics writ large as Housing First model CAN be a success and it CAN work … yet only for 11% of the roofless rough sleeper population so Housing First is NOT a solution at all to the problem of rough sleeping. The HF advocates propaganda and which includes academia is as subtle as a sledgehammer.

4) Scaling-up Housing First will lead to an increase in rough sleeper numbers

The scaled-up Housing First model will only serve to INCREASE rough sleeper numbers in England for some obvious reasons around cherry picking and the impact scaling up has on reducing the availability of the elusive one-bedded property to other homeless cohorts.

In Greater Manchester we have seen the Social Impact Bond (SIB) initiative. This sees social enterprises invest in HF services tied to an investment return paid the longer the Housing First client remains in the permanent tenancy. That system inevitably leads to cherry picking on the allocation of HF properties in order to maximise the return from the SIB and HF clients are chosen essentially by reason of the lower and most manageable support need seeing those with the highest and most complex needs refused the HF property as they have the greatest chance of failing.

The cherry picking scam called the SIB

In the Scottish large scale HF pilot we also see in Edinburgh that 77% of those chosen to go onto the Housing First scheme had no history of being a rough sleeper in the first place. This is another obvious example of cherry picking and also debunks the Housing First theory of rough sleepers being granted a tenancy on an unconditional basis.

The Housing First model competes with many other single homeless groups for the elusive one bedded property which provides the ESCAPE from homelessness and/or rooflessness. It is a zero sum game so scaling up Housing First means reducing the one-bedded ESCAPE property for other single homeless groups such as hostel dwellers and single childless women in domestic abuse refuges.

For example, England’s 40,000 homeless hostel rooms sees a resident stay at a best estimate for 21 weeks on average meaning hostels see 2.48 persons per hostel room per year. 40,000 hostel rooms gives a throughput of 99,300 single homeless persons per year in hostels. Yet, when the competing Housing First model scales up from 2000 to 16,450 it means 14,450 fewer one-bedded ESCAPE properties are available to the hostel (and refuge) dweller thus longer times are spent at hostel and refuge. Say this increases from 21 weeks to 26 weeks and we see just 2 hostel dwellers per room per year and 80,000 residing in hostels pa down from almost 100,000 pa before.

This further means that hostels rooms will be denied to many more seeking to enter them and thus the rough sleeper number increases. Worse, we will see refuges have to refuse more women because they are full for longer and their throughput is reduced meaning more women, both single and with children, will be denied entry to refuge because refuges are unable to move on their existing residents as the Housing First model has taken so many more of the one-bedded ESCAPE properties. NB: Circa 35% of women who flee to refuge are childless thus single homeless who require the same one-bedded ESCAPE property in order to free up refuge rooms.

4. Housing First is 100% dependent on the one-bedded property being available.

The Housing First model has two central aspects of; “… (1) the most effective solution to homelessness is permanent housing; and (2) all housing for the homeless should be provided immediately, without any preconditions, such as sobriety requirements.” In short that the bricks and mortar housing is provided firstly and unconditionally. Only when the housing element is provided can the visiting support element of Housing First be delivered to former rough sleepers.

This definition which is the most accurate I have seen in more than 20 years studying the Housing First model comes from a research report in April 20202 into two decades of Housing First operation in the United States from the Manhattan Institute entitled “Housing First and Homelessness: The Reality and the Rhetoric.”

The Manhattan Institute April 2020 report

The model has been in operation in the US for two decades and more yet in England it has rarely seen any more than 5 years of operation. HF in the USA like in England is party apolitical having the support of Democrat and Republican alike just as in England HF has broad cross party apolitical support from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Homelessness (APPG Homeless) for which Crisis the leading advocate of HF in England provide the secretariat.

Put very simply the Housing First model as its name suggests means the model cannot work if that housing is not available. The housing that is needed for Housing First is the elusive permanent one-bedded property which in England in 2019/20 sees official data record SRS landlords provided just 11,106 one-bedded properties to ALL single homeless groups. This used to be 13,000 per year and before that 19,000 per year as the Moving In report from Crisis stated in 2017.

These 11,000 or so (2019/20 CORE data) single homeless properties is the SRS and thus permanent yearly supply figure for 50,000 rough sleepers, some 100,000 homeless hostel dwellers, many thousands of single women in domestic violence and abuse refuges, 386,000 further single homeless households who reside as lodgers (sofa surfers) in someone else’s property. The social rented sector (SRS) also has demand for its one-bedded available properties from the 529,000 single households (individual or childless couple) that official figures reveal are on waiting lists for the same elusive one-bedded property.

In short, the supply and demand for permanent one-bedded properties in the social rented sector is so acutely imbalanced and under supplied it is a structural issue of fact of England’s rented housing. The private rented sector or PRS does not ordinarily provide permanent housing and most definitely does not provide permanent housing on an unconditional basis. The Housing First model however assumes that there is availability of the suitable properties and it further assumes they will be allocated unconditionally and will be operated in an unconditional way with evictions however well merited not permissible.

5. Housing First advocates demand Government stumps up funding but will not scrutinise!

The aforementioned Crisis ‘report’ into the three large-scale pilots of the Housing First model insists that Housing First is a ‘success’ yet does not provide substantiation or data to that effect; rather it states that HF is a ‘success’ on the repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it to be true basis. It further demands Government give continuation funding for these pilots and also demands additional Government funding to scale-up the Housing First model from its circa 2000 capacity currently to a 16,450 Housing First capacity figure previously mentioned without any real scrutiny of whether the pilots were successful or not. I have placed inverted commas correctly around this Crisis ‘report’ for numerous reasons that this ‘report’ overtly avoids by its repeated use of errors of omission, errors of commission and all round propaganda that even includes claiming success for a model which is not even a Housing First model at all.

How can being moved on be a Housing First nodel permanent property!!??

Regrettably, this is a common issue with Crisis as earlier this year its chief executive Jon Sparkes was effusive about the Scottish Housing First pilot recording zero (planned) evictions yet failing to mention it took 149 days on average across Scotland for Scottish Local Authorities to even find the suitable one-bedded property without any mention of this or any mention of where the rough sleeper resides for the 148 nights whilst they await the elusive one-bedded property becoming available in the first place.

The fact Crisis use the Aberdeen HF example in their propagandist ‘report’ yet choose to omit that the Aberdeen HF scheme takes 115 days to actually find the elusive one-bedded HF property in the first place and cannot possibly meet the Housing First model theory and criteria of immediately housing the rough sleeper characterises the propagandist errors of commission Crisis ‘report.’

The official Scottish Government HF report

The Housing First theory of providing the housing firstly and immediately simply cannot hold when it takes 5 months on average to even find a property! It was later revealed as I reported above that 77% of clients on the Edinburgh Housing First pilot were NOT former rough sleepers too and presumably other single homeless cohorts such as hostel dwellers and it took over 6 months on average (195 days) to find a one-bedded property for the Edinburgh Housing First client.

The 77% non rough sleeper charade and cherry picking

6. Housing First’s “just fund and don’t dare scrutinise” demand

Government MUST properly scrutinise the Housing First pilots before committing any more funding for them and this should have been done way before the issue of continuation funding was needed. It cannot be satisfied with the hyperbolic delusion of the Housing First advocates saying it is ‘success’ on a tell a lie often enough and people believe it basis! What if Housing First actually increases rough sleeping numbers which I argue it does? Why are we bombarded with never substantiated statements that Housing First works without asking for evidence and without defining what ‘works’ means in this context?

Why does nobody ever check basic facts and operate basic levels of scrutiny by asking how come when New York City began Housing First it had 33,000 rough sleepers yet after 20 years of HF operation it has 78,000?

Of course there could be many other reasons why the homeless rough sleeper population has increased in NYC and it doesn’t necessarily follow that adopting Housing First means greater homeless rough sleeper numbers. However, it most definitely does mean that there is no way anyone can say Housing First is a success in NYC is there!? Yet that is all we hear and read and this and other claimed ‘successes’ are never substantiated or evidenced they are just repeated in mantra fashion as part of the tell a lie often enough and people believe it strategy. The three large-scale pilot programmes in England are just that – PILOTS – which mean they must be scrutinised and in depth before any government funding commitment is made to scale-up. They need to be scrutinised vigorously and independently.

7 Housing First as cost-ineffective gravy trains?

The Crisis sham ‘report’ which alludes to be an official report to the APPG Homeless for whom Crisis provides the secretariat though covers itself with a disclaimer is highly selective on the cost of Housing First and even fails to state the £9,683 per Housing First client per year is JUST the cost of the visiting support with the rent cost being additional. Note too the rent cost will be far higher than normal as the housing benefit used to pay for it will be for furnished accommodation not the standard totally unfurnished SRS rehousing offer.

£9,683 per year is £185 per person per week in visiting support costs and as the claimed typical Housing First support offer is 3 hours per client per week this is over £60 per hour of support or unit cost which is extremely expensive and circa FOUR TIMES the costs when compared to the funding local authorities pay for one visiting hour of domiciliary care at £15 per hour or so. [A 2017 UK Home Care Association report saw £14.68 per hour as the average across England]

Further, as the Housing First worker to client support offer is three hours per week it gives a support worker to client ratio of 1:12 which means the support provider receives 12 times this £9,683 per person funding for each visiting support worker they employ which equates to £116,196 of funding for each visiting support worker employed!

I mention these admittedly crude ratios and figures so that the Housing First model is thoroughly and rigorously investigated as to cost and that a detailed examination of cost, capacity and impact on other homeless services is undertaken and BEFORE any additional government funding is ‘spaffed up the wall’ on this highly theoretic model.

What is the purpose of any pilot programme in the first place if not to rigorously scrutinise what the pilot programmes claimed to do in the first place.

The Housing First model like all other new initiatives does not operate in a vacuum and has impacts on the single homeless market it seeks to disrupt which is why I discuss the impacts on hostels and refuges and also compare the excessive Housing First visiting support costs to visiting care services.

Housing First I posit can at best provide a working solution to just 11% of rough sleepers and it can only manage this at exorbitant and unsustainable cost and to the detriment of all other single homeless groups by adopting a beggar they neighbour approach to the majority of single homeless persons and households.

In addition there are literally dozens of other aspects I could have detailed such as the rent costs and how can the PRS landlords in England ever provide a permanent escape property even before ill-considered aspects as the banning of no fault eviction proposals that will see PRS landlords taking flight from all of the single homeless rehousing market.

I could also detail many highly nuanced aspects such as how cherry picking the HF client means that hostels will become far more dangerous environments as they are the only option left for the most complex need and most violent rough sleeper.

Will hostels have to enhance their legally questionable but operationally necessary banning of certain homeless persons and what are the consequences of that aspect?

You can be sure the Housing First scheme will not unconditionally take arsonists and schedule one offenders and be equally sure that landlords, private and social, will not willingly accommodate such HF clients unconditionally on allocation and unconditionally agree not to evict during the HF tenancy!

These aspects are taken as they will happen by the deluded Housing First advocates and why they vehemently object to any real scrutiny of their extremely theoretic model that cannot work in practice which would be exposed by real independent scrutiny rather than Crisis PR propaganda or paid consultancy / paid academic reports saying what the clients wants them to say.

If you still believe that England does not need a root and branch and fully independent enquiry into the Housing First model and the impacts of scaling up this model then you are seriously mistaken. However, if you want more visible rough sleepers on the streets and more ‘aggressive begging’ and more retail outlets arguing for business rate reductions due to rough sleepers outside retail premises during the day and reducing footfall and thus retail profits, and all the other nefarious claims, then go ahead and lobby for the scaling up of the Housing First model and panacea that can only increase rough sleeper numbers

England’s most housing vulnerable, those without a roof that we call rough sleepers deserve far better than the Housing First unworkable farrago

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UPDATE 16:52pm

I forgot to source the comparative visiting care funding costs in the above and below is from a 2017 BBC website article on the funding crisis in social care which detailed average per hour funding cost for visiting care services (UKCHA – UK Care Home Association.)

See The Person? Nah! The SRS is seeing what it wants to see

Next week is #StopTheStigma week across social housing which is an extremely worthy cause as many believe and often state that social rented sector (SRS) housing is the housing of last choice.

The SRS want you to believe this housing of last choice tag is only said by those who do not live in the social rented sector yet anyone who saw the ITV News broadcasts and the appalling state of some SRS properties – which I correctly called shit holes here – means that the SRS has to get its own house in order first before it can castigate those outside the sector for the housing of last choice tag and belief.

More importantly UNTIL the SRS gets its own house in order the housing of last choice tag will remain and more so and the ITV News team are openly looking for more cases of what I rightly called tenant abuse by social landlords, typified by one tenant who was begged by her daughter NOT to speak with ITV News such was the daughter’s shame at the shit hole they are force to live in. The daughter has never brought any of her friends back to her home due to its ‘shit hole’ state which is also abuse and also an outrage from the SRS landlord involved.

ALL who work in the SRS should stop and imagine being that parent and that child

As I said at the time anyone who saw the ITV News broadcasts cannot UNSEE them and what they exposed was abuse, de facto abuse of tenants by purportedly social landlords. Not just abusive practises but de facto abuse.

The #StopTheStigma campaign is rightly supported by the Chartered Institute Of Housing (CIH) and TPAS (Tenant Participation Advisory Service) yet both these organisations are yet to condemn the abuse or respond officially to the ITV News broadcasts. That is a disgrace and the collaboration with #SeeThePerson campaign, which is also well merited, is demeaned by the non-condemnation of tenant abuse.

This is the ostrich syndrome being used by ALL of these organisations. You cannot orchestrate a campaign however worthy if you refuse to see the reality of the abuse that tenants are having imposed on them by SRS landlords. You cannot pretend it is inconvenient or doesn’t exist or that it hasn’t been seen by millions as part of the ITV News broadcasts … yet this is precisely what is going on with the ‘See The Person’ strategy.

It is truly perverse for social landlords to defend outsiders from calling the social tenant when the social landlord is abusing those same social tenants as a matter of routine.

The original ITV News broadcast revealed Clarion tenants had been living in unfit for human habitation properties for 6 years, and it would take another 5 years before that is addressed, and the chief executive of Clarion was given a £39k yearly bonus on top of a £343k pa salary for operating this shit hole properties. To add insult to injury the chief executive of the National Housing Federation then said she is sorry that tenants FELT not listened to, which is appalling and an adverse narrative created by landlords on tenants.

The only rational conclusion or deduction to be made is that social landlords and their lobbies in CIH and NHF and even the leading tenant group (TPAS) are playing at games of denial and their campaigns are of the fur coat and no knickers variety.

Get your own house in order and quickly before the notion of the SRS as the housing of last choice becomes intractably embedded in people’s psyche and as a result of the appalling abusive treatment social tenants receive from social (sic) landlords!

CIH, NHF, TPAS, all SRS landlords who have yet to publicly condemn the abuse of tenants by Clarion, Guinness and other supersized HAs have brought this on themselves by their inaction and abuse of tenants.

What are they all waiting for? Why are all these SRS actors scared shitless to publicly criticise the supersized housing associations? The same people you castigate for saying that the SRS is the housing of last choice will all have seen substantial evidence that the SRS landlord is no better than the PRS landlord, the proverbially nasty bastard landlord. They can’t UNSEE the ITV News broadcasts which the ‘great and the good’ of the SRS are seeking to deny never happened. WHEN the general public see that the SRS is NOT condemning the abuse of tenants and publicly then why the hell do you think they will get behind your campaigns of seeing the person?

SRS shit houses and SRS shithouses (and half a million abused SRS tenants)

The social rented sector is as hypocritical as it gets. It rightly emphasises the huge importance of the stability of a good quality and genuinely affordable social housing property gives and roundly and loudly pats itself on the back. Not a problem with that nor can there be.

However when bad social housing (that is unaffordable too) is exposed as in a recent series of ITV News broadcasts the ‘sector’ seeks to blame anyone and everyone else and scrambles for excuses instead. That is rank duplicity and hypocrisy.

The ITV News broadcasts revealed not just unfit for human habitation properties but actual abuse of tenants by some of the largest social (ahem) landlords. You can’t unsee what you have seen and the social rented ‘sector’ cannot spin their way out of this by creating false narratives or seeking excuses, it has to own the problem and do something about it.

I will not stop reminding the ‘sector’ that they are shithouses seeking to excuse their shit houses when they say that “tenants felt not listened to” which was the truly offensive narrative of Kate Henderson; or when Alistair MacIntosh shamelessly says Government must cough up more money to address the issue and ever so conveniently forgets to mention the £37 billion coughed up by Government in the Decent Homes Programme.

Dear social housing professional:-

• Imagine for a second that the ITV News broadcasts were about PRS landlords and imagine the howls of outrage from the SRS at the audacity of the private landlord arguing for more government money to operate fit for human habitation properties, or saying that tenants FELT not listened to when the broadcast revealed those landlord to be as deaf as a post to tenants legitimate concerns over years and years!
• Imagine if Angela Price was a private landlord’s tenant not a SRS tenant whose daughter begged her not to talk to ITV as it would reveal the shit hole she and her daughter live in and a shit hole to which her daughter has always refused to bring her friends to because it was a shit hole?

Would you be outraged? Would you be saying these landlords are criminals and should be taken to court and never allowed to rent properties ever again? Would you be calling this the abuse it is?

There is and never can be any excuse for these shit hole properties. There is and never can be any excuse for the abuse perpetrated on tenants by Clarion, Guinness or any other purportedly social landlord, or indeed any social or private landlord. Yet Alistair MacIntosh of HQN is saying this here:

ITV won’t go away till we spend money. In a way that makes them our best friend. Let’s put a price on turning the homes we are ashamed of into ones we can all be proud of. How should we split the bill between landlords and the government? That’s never an easy dilemma to resolve.

https://hqnetwork.co.uk/news/opinion-we-must-find-the-cash-to-fix-the-problem-of-poor-housing-5365

Let’s be clear this is abuse and not just abusive practise. The Angela Price tenant experience screams abuse not ‘merely’ abusive practises.

Let’s also not kid ourselves that these shit holes are atypical or minimal as Kate Henderson the Nat Fed chief executive tried by saying this is only around 5% of housing association properties. Five percent of 2.5 million English HA properties is 125,000 shit hole properties affecting 300,000 or so men, women and children who live in HA shit hole properties. That is not a small number or a fact to be minimised as excuse or explanation. It is the shameful state of play and context of what is mistermed social housing and thoroughly asocial.

To those social housing ‘professionals’ ready to respond with the How dare you say that arguments / blaming the messenger strategy I ask what the fuck are you doing in social housing and get the fuck out of it if you are happy that tenants are abused by any such landlords.

You cannot throw stones when you live in glass houses.

I have no doubt the vast majority of social housing is NOT the shit holes that ITV News has exposed yet 300 social tenants being abused is never acceptable, neither is 300 or 30 or 3 but by the pen of the chief executive of the National Housing Federation, it is 300,000 men, women and children who are abused in housing association shit holes. IF that is replicated in council housing it takes the figure to 500,000 men, women and children across all ‘social’ housing just in England who are abused and living in shit holes.

That can never be excused or attempted to explained away so casually and glibly as Kate Henderson has tried. It can never be blamed on a lack of funding as Alistair MacIntosh has stated and who also conveniently omits that housing association in England have for the past four years made in excess of £6 billion per year in profits on turnover of £22 billion per year.

There is no acceptable excuse or ever can be for the abuse of tenants, of half a million men, women and children in England alone. Stop blaming the messenger. Start owning the problem and get your head out of your arse that is hiding behind the myth of social purpose and stop glibly saying the litmus test is would I live there and simply saying No but then doing sod all about it or even worse defending it!

Christopher Pincher is the Tories Rachman. This housing minister must go

Christopher Pincher the Tory housing minister must resign immediately or be sacked as in his own words he has condoned the worst excesses of landlordism and tenant abuse by Clarion Housing Group the UK’s largest housing association that we all witnessed on ITV News.

The series of ITV News broadcasts exposed abuse by Clarion and also revealed that Clarion knew of the dilapidations, severe damp, black mould and other unfit for human habitation standards they imposed on tenants as abuse since 2015 and some 6 years ago.

Christopher Pincher is saying this is acceptable as Clarion self-referred the matter to the regulator of social housing shortly before the ITV News broadcast and some 6 years after Clarion admitted they first knew of these properties which do not deserve the label of shit holes.

Social (sic) landlord Rachmanism and tenant abuses are fully supported by Christopher Pincher and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is what this letter says.

The relevant extract

The full letter

There is no other comment needed except to remind you that Gavin now Lord Barwell is a board member of Clarion and a past Tory housing minister as is David Orr CBE the former chief executive of the National Housing Federation the membership lobby for housing associations of which Clarion is the largest member. Issues I discussed here and make no mistake this is abuse.

PS – As Christopher Pincher is an alleged well known sexual predator who has not been sacked for being predatory I doubt he will be sacked or be honorable enough to resign for doing bugger all about decades of landlord abuse on tenants do you?

Everyone In was an epic failure

7 in every 10 rough sleepers in London were NOT accommodated and/or supported by Everyone In proving that this government plan to cleanse the streets of roofless rough sleepers was epic failure. CHAIN data reveals of the 11,018 rough sleepers recorded in London just 3,365 were ‘caught’ by the wholly misnamed Everyone In scheme.

31% of London’s rough sleepers were ‘found’ yet 69% of them were not even found let alone accommodated and/or supported

The CHAIN Data

I am sick and tired of reading that Everyone In was (a) a success, and (b) it proved that rough sleeping COULD be ended if the political will was there.

These dual claims are stated all the time yet they are bullshit as the London CHAIN data reveals. They are the claims of the deluded hope-monger; claims that have been made by Government, Labour Party, the homeless APPG, every local authority, Big Issue, Crisis, Homeless Link, Shelter, Centre for Homelessness Impact, Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all even including the most left-wing housing and homeless activists

Everyone was NOT in. The majority of rough sleepers were not IN they were OUT and still left behind as roofless persons.

It matters not a jot whether the 31% of London rough sleepers who had some contact with the EI scheme were (a) accommodated temporarily or (b) were accommodated and left EI because it was not for them, all that matters was Everyone In was Everyone NOT In as the scheme failed almost 70% of roofless persons by failing to even bloody well reach them.

The CHAIN data also proved that the number of rough sleepers on the streets of London actually INCREASED despite this supposed Every One In scheme. No doubt some of the deluded hope-mongers will say at least it was only a tiny 3% increase as is their want and/or conveniently overlook that rough sleeper number INCREASED despite EI and despite the eviction ban in place as well.

None of these deluded hope-mongers are likely to ask WHY the rough sleeper numbers increased or WHY the Everyone (sic) In scheme failed so epically. They will continue to pat themselves on the back for what they did do and just ignore what they did not do … as is their want.

None of the deluded hope-mongers will say how the hell can the Housing First Model possibly work to address rooflessness if we can’t even FIND the rough sleepers in the first bloody place to fill the one-bedded properties that we know do not exist to enable the escape from rooflessness and upon which the Housing First Model farrago is 100% based upon the bullshit assumption that the one bed properties do exist and are available.

I have kept this short as the premise that EI was success is used widely and consistently. It is an assertion that has no basis in fact or reality and it is a LIE that the deluded hope-mongers are holding onto for dear life as it excuses their ignorance, incompetence and collusion.

When will we wake up to the reality of rough sleeping in England without being called woke? Hmm!

Sh*t houses and ‘social’ landlord abuses

ITV News in a series of broadcasts have given social (ahem) landlords a bit of a deserved kicking recently. The video footage of severe damp and black mould that Clarion Housing Group has known since 2015 yet done nothing about and its tenants told it will be another 5 years at least until something is done is but one example of a catalogue of abuse by social (ahem) landlords on tenants.

The Mother who says her daughter begged her NOT to be interviewed as her friends would see the shit hole state of her Guinness Housing property, a property her daughter refuses to bring any of her friend to see because of the black mould and damp is classic mental abuse as well as financial abuse that the landlord could possibly get away with charging rent on such a shit hole.

I use shit hole throughout this piece to describe properties that are dilapidated, injurious to mental and physical health and ones that are unfit for human habitation. There is no better or more apt term to use.

The fact that the board of Clarion Housing Group saw fit to award Claire Miller the chief executive with a £39k per year bonus on top of her £350k basic salary for knowingly operating these shit holes is just another point. That board includes the former Tory housing minister Gavin Barwell and the former chief executive of the housing association lobby NHF in David Orr CBE to make the arguments that (a) abuse of tenants is structural (no pun intended) and that the largest and leading social (sic) landlords and their boards (b) don’t give a toss about it, are easily and readily made.

When the current chief executive of the NHF Kate Henderson says that (a) severe damp and black mould only affects “around 5%” of HA properties, and (b) that residents FELT not listened to – we really see the extreme couldn’t-give-a-shit-ness that is the culture of social landlords coming to the fore.

In one of these ITV News broadcasts Kate Henderson states:

On the money paid to chief executives, Ms Henderson said: “Salaries of housing association chief executives are set by independent boards, various boards often have residents on them and they are comparable in the not-for-profit charitable sector.”

https://www.itv.com/news/2021-06-24/national-housing-federation-sorry-for-unacceptable-living-conditions-exposed-by-itv-news

Kate Henderson fails to mention those “independent boards” comprise Gavin Barwell and David Orr in the case of Clarion who awarded Claire Miller a £39k bonus for operating these shit holes!

5% of English HA properties is 125,000 houses of their 2.5m total comprising 300,000 men, women and children who are subjected to these abuses which apparently is fine according to Kate Henderson as her member housing associations have fewer properties in severe disrepair than council or private landlords. Her statement that residents FELT they were not listened to rather than being not listened to at all for many years is an outrageous narrative yet regrettably so, so typical of the social landlord culture that the social rented sector simply refuses to believe.

However, the ITV News broadcasts have shown the video footage of severe damp, black mould, other severe disrepair and rat and mice infestations and even the social housing ‘professional’ cannot unsee what has been seen.

This is Abuse!

The latest ITV News broadcast showed a Guinness HA tenant Angela Price who was begged not to tell her reality to ITV News by her daughter who has never brought any of her friends back to their shit hole. The Mother must feel she has failed her child by forcing her to live in such a property and as well as subjecting the child she bore to ingesting damp spores every day and night, a physical health condition, her daughter suffers the mental anguish of not being able to bring her friends into her home, as does her Mother. That is physical and mental abuse. The fact she is charged for the privilege to subsist in a property that is unfit for human habitation is financial abuse by the landlord to the tenant. Imagine if that was your child reader!?

How about the numerous Clarion tenants in the previous ITV News broadcasts who are working two and in some cases three jobs to afford the £1300 per month / £300 per week shit holes to have the pleasure of living in ‘scarce social housing’ that is severely damp and black mould ridden properties as well as having mice infestations and rats scurrying above their heads every night while they try to sleep. That is also mental abuse and financial abuse from a purportedly social landlord -one which rewards its chief executive with a £39,000 per year bonus to operating these shit holes.

Does their landlord chief executive being financially rewarded for this exacerbate the mental abuse and anguish that Clarion tenants feel? You bet it will do. Does the 6 years to date of these abuses and being told it will be at least a further 5 years exacerbate these Clarion abuses? You bet it does! Does the NHF chief executive seeking to downplay these abuses exacerbate these abuses and make all tenants think that housing association landlords do not give a shit? You bet it does.

The purportedly social landlords need to wake up and smell the coffee and own these abuses. The Kate Henderson NHF narrative of it is only 5% (a mere 300,000 men, women and children subjected to abuse) and seeking to deny that landlords don’t listen is the damage limitation strategy of the incompetent buffoon. It aptly yet unfortunately describes the Teflon bubble within a Teflon bubble within a Teflon bubble that characterises the social rented sector to any criticism of social landlords however substantiated and however the videos or other fact proves.

The social (sic) rented sector has been found out. It has been exposed for what it has become which is as crass in its commercial focus as the private rented sector treating tenants as cash cows to be abused. It takes 50 years to build a good reputation but just 5 minutes to lose it and that is what has happened here with the ITV News broadcasts that nobody can unsee. The same old same old damage limitation exercises will no longer wash and the NHF and the rest of the social rented sector have badly misjudged this shit show they have caused with their shit hole properties.

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The scandalous and appallingly judged NHF news release is here

NB: £5.7bn spent on repairs AND maintenance and English HAs make >£6bn pa in profit on their £22.1 bn turnover.

UPDATE 30 June 2021

Following a response which asked where did the “around 5%”National Housing Federation figure originate for ‘some kind of damp or mould problem’ as above I looked at the authoritative English Housing Survey for 2019/20 which said: –

“In 2019, 12% of dwellings in the social rented sector failed to meet the Decent
Homes Standard. This is lower than the proportion of private rented (23%) and
owner occupied (16%) homes.”

The same EHS goes on to say ‘damp’ as one category is in 4% of socially rented homes but what about black mould (aka abusive properties?) It seems that Kate Henderson and the NHF are selectively using data and known errors of commission and omission once more … Plus Ca Change!

Clarion abuses its tenants. Minister(s) & SRS silence is deafening

Imagine trying to sleep in a rented property when you and the landlord know it is infested with rats.

Now imagine that you are in this position for 11 years or 4,000 continuous nights and the landlord won’t do anything. Your landlord won’t do anything for the mice infestation either or the black mould damp or a leaking bath that forces you to wash only in a bucket as it leaks into the downstairs flat … and the landlord charges you £300 per week for living in this hell hole for which you need to work 2 jobs just to keep a roof over your head and those of your children.

Properties like this should be shut down with a form of public health order and landlords who operate them should face criminal charges yet these properties are owned and managed by Clarion a housing association, the UK’s largest landlord of any type, who have known about the dilapidation for 6 years since 2015 if not before and say we aim to rehouse you in a further 5 years time making 11 years or 4,000 nights of you asking the rats to be quieter so you can sleep.

4,000 nights of worrying whether you yourself are in fact guilty of parental abuse for allowing your children to suffer the chronic damp property with all the adverse health impacts damp and black mould has.

Your landlord is the real villain and criminal who is guilty of adult and child abuse for the dilapidated state of the properties they charge you for, mental, emotional and psychological abuse as well as the financial abuse for charging you £300 per week for a property that is injurious to health and unfit for human habitation yet it is self-evident the landlord does not give a toss and can get away with such abuses because they are a social landlord and Private Registered Provider so local and central government will do absolutely bugger all about the 4000 nights of hellish abuse you and 500 other households have imposed upon you.

Imagine your mental state when you find the chief executive of this abusive landlord Claire Miller was awarded a £39,000 yearly bonus for operating this abuse on top of £350k per year in basic salary and awarded that bonus by a board of directors who include Gavin (Lord) Barwell the former housing minister and chief of staff to Theresa May, and the last chief executive of the National Housing Federation David Orr CBE, which is the national umbrella lobby for housing associations such as Clarion.

Last week ITV News exposed the state of these Clarion Housing Group properties and Clarion’s apathy to doing anything about them with Clarion stating this is a financial problem for them and paying indifference to their abuse of tenants whom Clarion has the audacity to call the customer. It was only in the website version of this that it emerged Clarion knew all of the issue in 2015 and 6 years ago and stated it will be at least another 5 years before Clarion do anything. ELEVEN YEARS.

Insert itv clarion

https://www.itv.com/news/2021-06-16/collapsed-ceilings-mice-and-mould-appalling-conditions-uncovered-across-an-entire-housing-estate-of-nearly-500-homes

I posted a piece about it here which was unashamedly and necessarily sweary as this is abuse by Clarion and they need to be brought to book. Clarion is a pariah and no better than the notorious Peter Rachman who believe saying we are so sorry is somehow sufficient, who roll out their Director of Housing on ITV News to say she will personally visit all 500 properties herself and which she has had 6 full years to do but hasn’t bothered in all that time until such PR advice was given to her after this systemic abuse was exposed on national television news.

This is abuse and callous indifference to that abuse by Clarion Housing Group.

The National Housing Federation has yet to condemn this abuse. Neither has the Chartered Institute of Housing, these being the two largest social rented sector lobbies. Their silence is deafening. Shelter, Crisis, Generation Rent, JRF, numerous think tanks and all of the other promoters of the social rented sector have similarly not condemned this Clarion abuse and neither has the Mayor Of London Sadiq Khan or has the Conservative government or the Labour Party opposition.

The collective silence is deafening and in stark contrast to Robert Jenrick the relevant (MHCLG) minister who openly condemned much less worse practices by Croydon Council as landlord n March this year yet has said absolutely nothing about these Clarion abuses.

Insert Jenrick croydon hypocrite

3 March 2021

That too is callous indifference by all of these social rented sector promoters and rank duplicity by Robert Jenrick the minister reponsible.

The social housing main trade journal Inside Housing runs two stories of (a) Clarion apologises and (b) outrage that social (sic) landlords are being targetted by PFI-type disrepair solicitors! How dare they do this says Inside Housing to beneficent social landlords and not focus on the proverbial nasty private landlords … er …

There you have it reader in a nutshell – the indignance of the social rented sector to any criticism, however evidential and however long-term, to their ethereal social (sic) purpose and complete failure to even look at the reality of SRS tenant abuses.

The (tenant) customer is always wrong