Fantastic news!!! :-) Department of Health to fund £41.5m homelessness scheme Sheltered housing schemes and disused hostels are to be converted into accommodation for young homeless people as part of a new £41.5m scheme to be funded by the Department of Health (DoH). The programme, which is made up of £40m from the DoH and £1.5m from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), will be split between two projects. Part will go to the Platform for Life programme, which will award capital funding to housing associations, councils and private sector developers that bid to convert unsuitable sheltered housing, commercial premises such as disused hotels, or family hostels into homelessness accommodation. The second share of the £41.5m will go to a new round of the Homelessness Change hostel upgrade scheme and will focus on improving health outcomes. There is no fixed split of the shared £41.5m fund, so bids will be considered on their individual merits. Allocations must be spent by March 2016. Around £15m of the DoH funding will be channelled through the Greater London Authority, and £25m through the Homes and Communities Agency. Citizens Advice data in January revealed the number of homeless 17-to-24-year-olds who required its help increased by 57% to 4,529 between 2007/08 and 2012/13. Tamsin Griem, head of development at youth homelessness charity Centrepoint, said the fund’s ‘potential to increase the housing options available to young people ready to live independently is encouraging’. At a Chartered Institute of Housing conference on younger people’s housing last Thursday in London, housing professionals called for the funding to be used to convert two and three-bedroom social properties that have become difficult to let since the introduction of the bedroom tax. Homelessness minister Kris Hopkins mentioned Platform for Life in a statement in June, but revealed few details apart from that it will ‘provide shared accommodation for young people at risk of homelessness’. A DCLG spokesperson said: ‘The feedback from the housing sector will be considered ahead of publishing the scheme’s prospectus.’
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 10:10:48 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015