Housing bill endangers the vulnerable

WHILE it is right and proper that much of our political focus has been on the forthcoming independence referendum, we must not forget that the Scottish Parliament is currently reviewing and shaping laws that will affect our own and our children’s future.
Today the Housing Bill is being debated at Holyrood.

As it stands, the bill will allow social landlords to discriminate on the grounds of age when allocating social homes.

But Shelter Scotland contends that a person’s age should not help or hinder their chance of being allocated a home and we are ­concerned that this measure will disadvantage young people who already face major obstacles to finding a safe and secure home of their own.

Why should young and ­vulnerable people in Scotland who are already getting a raw deal be further discriminated against?

Those who support this retro­grade measure have singularly failed to describe the problem they are seeking to address or its scale or nature.

They have failed to present any convincing evidence that the law needs to change.
Shelter Scotland, along with a coalition of charities, including Barnardo’s Scotland, Children 1st and Who Cares? Scotland, has written to housing minister Margaret Burgess to ask that the proposal be removed from the draft Housing (Scotland) Bill. 

If this proposal is not removed, there is a very real danger that vulnerable groups and young people in particular will be unfairly penalised and will not be allocated the homes they desperately need.

Graeme Brown

Director, Shelter Scotland

South Charlotte Street

Edinburgh

The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA) supports the additional flexibility within the Housing (Scotland) Bill to allow the consideration of age criteria – or more accurately the consideration of the age group, support needs and lifestyle of an applicant versus the existing dynamic within a community or building – when deciding who should receive an offer for a particular property.

This rule change should enable social landlords to make sensible allocations and help to sustain tenancies and communities.

Unlike organisations, such as Shelter Scotland and its allies, we do not think that this flexibility will be extensively used, but there are occasionally situations where the applicant at the top of the list should not automatically be allocated a specific property due to particular local circumstances.

It would be quite wrong to simply assume that young people will be adversely affected by this rule. Decisions around sensitive lettings apply to housing applicants right across the age spectrum. In individual instances, restrictions in being able to access certain properties could just as easily apply to older people, as well as younger people, depending on each individual set of circumstances.

It is important that Shelter Scotland monitors the bigger picture in allocations. But it should also recognise that each landlord, with its knowledge of the existing lifestyle mix or historical issues in any given area, is best placed to make a decision on particular individual allocations.

There are occasions where it is obvious that an allocation would be inappropriate and doomed to failure, despite the applicant being “top of the list”. It would actually be unfair to rigidly allocate in this way, because not only would it potentially contribute to neighbourhood problems, it is effectively setting the applicant up to fail, when they should be given every possible chance to succeed.

In any event, the age of new households is recorded by the Scottish Government through its SCORE system, so it would soon become apparent if landlords were “over-utilising” the flexibility over age.

Scotland’s housing associations and co-operatives are not – and never have been – in the business of excluding ­particular sections of the community from living in their properties.

The social housing sector in Scotland is devoted to developing sustainable communities. Age and lifestyle are critical factors in dealing with this issue and the SFHA and its members believe that discretion around age groups would be a useful tool in ensuring housing developments and communities reflect the mix and characteristics of wider society.

Landlords’ hands should not be tied with inflexible ­policies and laws.

Andy Young

Policy and membership manager, Scottish Federation of Housing Associations

St Vincent Street

Glasgow