Blog: Why tenant stability matters

In this blog, Laura explains how Sustain supports tenants and why many vulnerable people need a secure and stable home to start getting their lives back on track.

Whether it’s family breakdown, job loss, a mental health condition, addiction, or often a combination of these, the fact is that every year thousands of people find themselves without a roof over their heads.

Without supported accommodation, most people in this position would be homeless, highly vulnerable and it would be very difficult for them to re-stabilise their lives.

We work with property owners, who are our home providers, across the West Midlands to give people somewhere safe, clean and welcoming to live, and the support they need to start re-building their lives.

It is Sustain’s responsibility to set standards for accommodation and support, and a big part of my job is to ensure those standards are met and make a positive difference to people’s lives.

Above the minimum

We ask our home providers to give a minimum of three hours support to each tenant per week, three times more than the number of hours usually expected by Birmingham City Council.

The type of support varies because it is personalised to the needs of each individual tenant. It can range from helping them with their basic welfare needs and having a chat to find out how they are getting on to supporting them on their journey to drug and alcohol recovery.

What’s important is that the support is what that person wants and needs at that point in time, rather than our perceptions of what they need.

Guiding support

Our housing providers employ the support workers and Sustain gives guidance and recommendations to help them in these roles. We also run regular training sessions with our own staff, particularly the safeguarding and inspections teams.

Our housing providers regularly complete staff audits and send us their rotas so we can make sure there are sufficient staffing levels to manage the tenants across their properties.

If we think the support is not quite where it needs to be, we will advise the landlord, ask them to increase their hours or we may send them an improvement action plan.

Approachability

Together with my colleagues Nicky and Sue, we meet tenants as often as we can, so they know who we are and can ask questions or raise issues. We want tenants to feel as though they are able to talk to us, either through their support worker or directly with us.

Sustain tenants arrive with a wide variety of difficult and challenging histories, so we do our best to build a trusting relationship with them so that they feel comfortable about letting us know how they are getting on and raising concerns if they need to.

Due to their vulnerabilities, some tenants are not comfortable phoning us, so we need to get out and about and talk face-to-face.

As a support worker, it’s important to gradually build a relationship with each tenant so they have a continuity of support from one person. We don’t tell a tenant how they should sort their life out. We support them in the way they choose.

Care and resilience

The best support workers are caring and non-judgmental and always try to be considerate and be understanding without prejudice.

To operate effectively support workers need to keep learning and refreshing their knowledge, but also build up resilience, because the job can be challenging.

Being a tenant’s representative is one of these challenges, because our tenants often face big obstacles in life, so we sometimes have to be their voice, and help them overcome the barriers and preconceptions that can hold them back. We need to work through all that, stick around and push through for them.

I’m able to do this because Sustain operates a policy of openness and transparency that is grounded in a genuine care for the tenant, and these values run through the whole organisation, from the support team to the board. This empowers me to do my job.

Secure tenancies

When I started working in supported accommodation 20 years ago, I came across many tenants who had experienced a revolving door, being moved from one house to another, and sadly, I think this has started happening again.

In the last two years at Sustain we’ve seen an influx of hard-to-reach tenants, who are struggling because they have been moved in and out of properties, damaging their trust and confidence, and making them harder to work with.

Unlike Sustain, which gives tenants assured shorthold tenancies, also known as ASTs, many supported housing providers work with licence agreements.

Licence agreements offer less security to tenants than ASTs because they allow a landlord to move a tenant on more swiftly, without the need to follow the same eviction procedures as they would with an AST.

Many tenants have experienced trauma before they arrive in supported accommodation, so the last thing they need is insecurity. They need stability and security to even begin rebuilding their lives.

This is why Sustain gives tenants assured shorthold tenancies, so that they feel more secure and at home. While assessing the suitability of tenants for supported accommodation, at first point of contact, is key, everyone should have the right to feel at home somewhere.

At Sustain we’re all about finding the right support and staying focussed on helping the tenant by thinking about the ways we can help them, rather than evict them at the first sight of problems.

If we didn’t talk to tenants to get to the root of their issues and take some responsibility for them all we are doing is moving the problem on somewhere else.

When we need to, we will take action against tenants that are the cause of persistent nuisance issues or anti-social behaviour. We view each situation on a case-by-case basis, and are members of Resolve, the organisation that helps housing providers and others to deal effectively with community safety and ASB issues through training, support, guidance and the sharing of best practice. We also work closely with Birmingham City Council’s Exempt Team in managing issues.

On the whole, by being professional, caring, and persistent, we can begin to help many tenants resolve their problems and start to re-build their futures.

Laura King is Lead Tenant Liaison Officer at Sustain UK

If you, or someone you know, is facing homelessness or experiencing any of the issues mentioned in this article, you can find out about applying for a tenancy with Sustain through our ‘Who is Eligible?’ page here:  https://sustainuk.org/how-to-apply/who-is-eligible/

We are currently recruiting for a Support Inspector & Tenant Engagement Officer and for a Property Inspector at Sustain. If you are interested in applying, you can find out more at: https://sustainuk.org/careers/