Managing Emergency Housing – How Arthur can help
At the end of last year, Shelter revealed that 280,000 were recorded as homeless in England. This was an increase of 23,000 from 2016.
Local councils are required to help those who are legally homeless, but the level of help is dependent on a number of factors, meaning that the council don’t have to offer to house everyone who is homeless.
Councils determine who qualifies for emergency housing based on these factors:
- A person has nowhere to stay
- A person has children, is pregnant or has another priority need
- A person meets the immigration and residence conditions
Emergency housing is a short term solution while the council looks into the applicant’s housing situation and how they will help in the long term.
The accommodation provided is required to be suitable for the applicant. It could be self-contained accommodation, a hotel, B&B, hostel or a refuge with some shared or communal areas. The quality of accommodation can vary greatly.
Tenants don’t have to pay for emergency housing upfront, but they may have to claim housing benefit or the universal credit housing element to help with rent.
There isn’t a set time for how long tenants can stay. Tenants can stay until the council decides whether or not they qualify for longer-term housing. This can take up to three months to decide but is often a lot quicker.
How Arthur can help property managers
As the name suggests, emergency housing can only be preplanned to a certain extent. It is important therefore for councils and emergency housing managers to be able to respond as quickly as possible. Arthur’s cloud-based software brings everything needed to manage emergency housing into one platform to boost efficiency and save time.
With the duration of a stay in emergency housing being typically a lot shorter than a standard tenancy and there being no set length of stay, those managing emergency housing need a software that is flexible enough to accommodate these challenges.
Within Arthur, councils and property managers can easily manage their different tenancy types with our tenancy subtypes.
Arthur also has the functionality for councils or property managers to apply nightly rent charges on a recurring basis. This allows for the necessary flexibility needed for emergency housing and ensures less rental errors or issues for all parties. For those property managers who are providing emergency housing for the council, you are able to bill councils directly for rent on Arthur.
Emergency housing can cover a variety of property types so your software needs to be able to adapt accordingly. Arthur software is equipped to deal with any property type its requirements.
Find out more about how Arthur can help you manage emergency housing. Try free today.
If you want to find out more about emergency housing please click here or visit the government’s website here.
