Richard spoke up on behalf of those threatened with homelessness, and supported the Council’s efforts to try to prevent people being made homeless, during a discussion on homelessness in the Council Committee of which he is vice-chair.

On 19 March the Housing, Economy and Business Committee (HEB) discussed the efforts the Council makes to prevent people who are threatened with eviction becoming homeless.

Drawing on the casework he deals with as a Councillor, Richard pointed out that being threatened with eviction from one’s home – being out on the street or placed in bed and breakfast accommodation many miles away – was a terrifying prospect for the families involved. It can lead to family break up and people losing their jobs if they wind up in bed and breakfast accommodation far away. In the recession, there are many reasons why this may happen, in particular redundancy. Every effort should be made to keep people in their homes while efforts are made to find them other suitable accommodation they can move to.

Landlords, sometimes because they are intent on jacking up rents, may try to remove tenants without going through a proper legal process. The policy of the Council is to insist the proper process is followed and to give those threatened with homelessness advice and support, trying to find them some other private sector accommodation. In most cases this is successful, but it is often quite late in the process that a solution is found.

Richard argued that people should not be pressured into leaving their accommodation early in the legal process, if no alternative accommodation had been found. If they were pressured into leaving their accommodation two problems arose:

–  it reduces the time available to the Council’s support team to find them an alternative home, and an alternative was often found quite late in the process, meaning they would have to go into bed and breakfast

– there was a danger that they might, in law, be deemed to have made themselves intentionally homeless, in which case what support the Council can provide is limited.

Richard therefore supported a policy of avoiding putting pressure on people to leave their accommodation early in the legal process, and that the Council should only accept that someone is homeless and put them in B and B accommodation before the process is exhausted if and when it is fundamentally evident that no alternative accommodation will become available.