8 Maidstone Borough Council
Tackling homelessness and offering people housing choices is a top priority
John Littlemore, our Head of Housing and Community Services, looks at how we will meet the borough’s housing needs over the next five years.
Poor housing or lack of a home has an impact on many areas of people’s lives, including employment, crime, education, homelessness and health.
That’s why our top priorities include tackling homelessness and making sure the borough has enough homes – and homes of the right type, quality and tenure – for future generations.
We’ve recently updated our Housing Strategy, setting out how we will meet residents’ housing needs over the next five years. It identifies the main housing issues and key challenges that the council and our partners need to address and how we will do this.
Here are the highlights - you can read the strategy in full on our website. Our achievements since 2011
In the past five years we’ve been able to make a real difference to people’s lives. Successes include:
Delivering 871 affordable homes, of which 63 were on rural exception sites for local needs housing.
Securing grant funding of almost £7 million from the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA).
Bringing 12 long term empty properties back into use as affordable housing.
Hosting Landlord forums and
offering a new HomeFinder Bond scheme to help homeless people gain access to privately rented properties.
Introducing a new allocations policy with new eligibility criteria and ‘banding’ to offer a fairer distribution of social housing properties.
Buying and refurbishing Aylesbury House and Magnolia House to provide temporary accommodation for 20 homeless households as a better alternative to expensive bed and breakfast accommodation.
The challenges we all face
An aging population By 2031 a greater proportion of the population will be aged 60 and over - the oldest age group (85+) will increase by 142%. Homes will need to be adapted for people’s needs and disabilities, and care provided. There is an estimated total need for 3,620 specialist homes for older people.
The need for more homes
We need an additional 5,800 affordable households from 2013 to 2031. Across the Borough it is estimated that around 43% of households can’t afford to access the market housing.
Social depravation and inequality The difference in life expectancy in the most affluent wards compared to our most deprived is 8.9 years. While deprivation in the borough is lower than the national average, 15% (4,300) of
children aged under 16 live in poverty. Homelessness
The number of homelessness decisions made by the council each year has increased by 655% from 80 to 604 since 2011. The cost of placing people in temporary accommodation has risen from £118,620 to £584,055.
Rent reduction forcing shift to shared ownership The Government is reducing rents in social housing by 1% a year for four years, cutting the income of registered providers (housing associations). This may lead them to a switch away from affordable rent homes to building shared ownership ones.
More 1 and 2 bed homes needed More than 53% of applicants on the housing register have a 1-bed need and 24% have a 2-bed need.
www.maidstone.gov.uk
Priority 1: Enable and support the delivery of quality homes across the housing market to develop sustainable communities.
We plan to:
A. Enable the delivery of homes with the mix, tenure and range of housing to meet the need identified in the emerging Local Plan.
B. Deliver a mix of homes of different types, tenure and size, via direct provision and in partnership with private developers, housing associations and other key partners.
C. Deliver new affordable homes that are designed to a high standard, energy efficient, accessible and respond to people’s changing needs.
D. Seek innovative funding and delivery options.
We will:
Create a Local Housing Company to build/acquire new affordable and private homes.
Ensure the emerging Local Plan provides an appropriate policy framework for affordable housing.
Promote home ownership products such as Help to Buy, Starter Homes, and Shared Ownership.
Look at demand for self and custom build homes and identify land to meet this demand.
Respond to the changing social housing market.
Enable the creation of new affordable housing, particularly 1 and 2 bedroom homes.
Maidstone Borough Council Maidstone Housing Strategy 2016 - 2020
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