The HCA has now announced the successor scheme to Temporary Social Housing Grant, for homes leased by Registered Providers for up to 30 years. This will be of great importance to short-life housing organisations, councils and housing associations who are involved in leasing properties.
The main differences between the new Temporary Empty Homes scheme and Temporary Social Housing are:
- the minimum length of lease is now 5 years instead of 2 years
- the home must have been empty for 2 years (previously there was no limit)
There are slightly more restrictions around the ownershp of the property prior to it being leased: local authorities and other registered providers are explicitly excluded (so a local authority can no longer lease a home to a housing association, which was possible under TSHG). But other publicly-owned homes are eligible.
Most other aspects seem to tbe the same as previously. Surprisingly even the rents do not have to fit into the Affordable Rent Tenancy regime. Instead the wording seems to be the same as for TSHG:
4.2.2 RPs must ensure that:
- the rent + Housing Benefit eligible Service Charge is within the Housing Benefit/Local Housing Allowance threshold, in the relevant local authority; and
- the provision of this scheme is cheaper than the cost of bed and breakfast accommodation.
It is not clear how this fits in with the recently implemented changes to housing benefit for homes used as temporary accommodation or for homelessness prevention.
There are special criteria around CPOs and EDMOs. The most disappointing of these - which we will seek to have changed - ist the requirement that the owner gives their permission for a home to be leased if it is under an EDMO. This somewhat undermines the point of an EDMO.
EHN will be submitting a number of questions to the HCA about how this scheme will be impletemented. We have set up
a new forum topic in the "leasing" forum for on-going discussion about the new scheme.
