Vulnerable people still living in unsafe supported housing in England two years after law was passed | Housing
People are dying in unsafe housing and communities are being irreversibly harmed by delays in passing a new law to restrict unregulated supported housing in England.
It has been more than two years since royal assent of the Supported Housing Bill, Conservative MP Bob Blackman’s private member’s bill for England and Wales, but it has yet to be implemented due to delays in establishing regulations.
This scheme is designed to tackle the scandal of “exempt” supported accommodation, where unscrupulous landlords make millions of pounds through housing benefit, providing poor quality homes to vulnerable people, often providing little or no support.
Supported housing is often used to house people recently released from prison, people with substance abuse problems, people escaping domestic violence, or people with mental health problems who need support to live independently.
The government launched a consultation on new regulations for the sector in February as part of the legislation but has yet to publish its response and campaigners fear it could take years for the law to become a reality.
“I’m becoming increasingly concerned and angry that we’ve been in a position where this situation has been allowed to drag on for two years,” Blackman said. “This situation is left out in the open and local authorities are doing their own thing.
“This is a real problem because we are not getting the necessary support from the government and as a result, I am quite confident that these rogue landlords are just making money hand in hand and increasing the number of properties they are involved with.”
He called on the government to move faster to implement legislation that would introduce minimum standards, licensing schemes and a national expert advisory panel to oversee the industry.
Jasmine Basran, Crisis’ head of policy and campaigns, said the charity had heard “horror stories” of exempt accommodation, including “rooms full of mice and mould, people having to share a washing machine with 70 people and people facing harassment and threats when trying to speak out”.
He said the passage of the law was a “huge win” and that some rogue providers had left the industry as a result, but that “vulnerable people are still at risk of exploitation” as the powers have not yet come into force.
The main concern about the industry is that rogue providers are placing very vulnerable people into shared homes; This can exacerbate addiction problems and mental health problems, create violence and antisocial behavior and put pressure on emergency services.
Meanwhile, some residential areas, particularly in Birmingham, which has around 30,000 exempt accommodation, have been overrun by landlords converting family homes into eight- and nine-bedroom houseshares to take advantage of the higher housing benefit rates it brings.
Gill Taylor leads the Homeless Dying Project at the Museum of Homelessness and said there were real concerns about people dying in poor quality exempt accommodation while legislation delays persisted.
Its latest research said there were 36 deaths in exempt accommodation in 10 local authorities in 2024, but fears the total figure could be much higher as the vast majority of councils do not collect this data.
“People are dying and even though they’re not dying, they’re suffering and no one knows it,” Taylor said.
“Even with the data we have, it’s pretty lacking in what we can actually say about these people. They’re dying in really confidential, potentially quite serious situations, and it’s very unclear whether they got the support they deserved or whether being in that accommodation was a factor in their death.”
He said there was an urgent need to collect more data on how many exempt accommodation properties there were and who lived in them.
“It’s not like local authorities don’t care about this; they have no way of knowing what happened right now, to whom and where,” he said.
Some councils have started to introduce their own measures to slow the rise of exempt accommodation, but campaigners said this was not enough to restrict rogue providers.
The market in Birmingham is dominated by five major providers, all of whom are rated as “non-compliant” by the Social Housing Regulator.
A report by administrators who audited Midland Livings CIC, a recently collapsed provider, said it had deployed security guards to protect residents after a series of serious incidents.
These include allegations of unlawful entry into homes, theft of white goods and diversion of money, as well as those associated with the company who are alleged to have “caused serious distress to vulnerable tenants by using threatening behavior and intimidation tactics to force residents to sign leases with other companies and vacate premises at short notice”.
A Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesman said: “Failing to build enough safe and affordable homes means rising homelessness, unaffordable rents and rising housing insecurity for millions of people across the country.
“That’s why we produced our National Plan to End Homelessness and last week announced an additional £124 million to help people in supported housing.
“The Supported Housing Act is a government priority and implementation will begin next month, giving people the support they need and ensuring providers consider the mix of people on their properties.”
