Comment(s)
The principles for Sheltered Housing evolved through collective human experience over many years. It is a steady state situation in which people get old, feeble, and need and seek additional support in old age. What has changed, however, is the method of funding : Whereas, the circumstances of elderly people, in Sheltered Housing, has not changed at all. The conclusion which seems to have been reached, recently, is to make the 'needs of the elderly' fit a new method of funding . The facility used to achieve, the above, is to ignore a large part of what was, hitherto, regarded as the general needs of Sheltered Housing residents. Thus, for 'official' purposes, it has been decreed that those needs no longer exist. I believe it is called: 'Creative' or 'imaginative' accounting, in other spheres !
In an E-mail
today: The Mayor, of London, advises that he is unable to
endorse this website !
In the 1960s-1970s One of the reasons given
for the explosion of Sheltered Housing was the national
housing shortage of family sized dwellings.It was felt that
if elderly residents living in larger than their needs
housing could be persuaded to move into Sheltered Housing
it would have the obvious effect of releasing their
previous homes back into the national housing stock. Over
the years these ideals faded and the Wardens of Sheltered
Housing gradually did less and less and now they wish to
remove them altogether and replace them with Floating
staff. The result is that Sheltered Homes are becoming less
and less popular as the facilities provided by it have
diminished . Then, suddenly, this week c. 11th December,
2007 the Government announced initiatives to bribe elderly
people to move out of their family sized houses and move
into smaller properties for the good of larger families who
need their houses. So we have a Government moving on two
different headings . In the first instance they are running
down Sheltered Housing by removing its original benefits of
having a Warden and applying Rent Restructuring and Target
Rents to them. Simultaneously they wish to bribe the
elderly to move out of their family sized homes into
smaller homes (such as Sheltered Housing ?) I may have
missed something, please do E-mail me if you can spot the
solution !
Increasingly there are reports of Sheltered Housing being
sold up for its land value.Landlords give various reasons,
none very plausible. One wonders, has this more to do with
the fact that newly created RSLs are heavily in debt and
the inner city land, Sheltered Housing occupies, having a
significant value ? Moreover, the new way of funding
through Supporting People . for residents on benefits could
lead, through contractual obligations, to the landlord
paying for Support Charges , such as Scheme Managers
Help The Aged are in the process of commissioning a
research paper :-Titled:'The Impact Of Floating Support On
Older People's Housing'
Welcome to ' AIMS' Age Concern England' who have submitted
an
article for this website.See side-bar menu
A consultation with residents does not over-rule contract
law. If you have a contract with your landlord then you
would have to agree
to it being revoked individually.
Contracts are not a democracy . If only one person
complains that his/her contract is being broken, then it is
a case for law
Just
thought I would pen a few lines to relieve my frustration
level today. We are in our second week of
floating wardens and it is very obvious that they are under
orders to keep all visits as short as possible, as they are
in and out like a fiddler's elbow. The landlords are
very happy with the reduction in their costs, but the
residents are anything but happy with the reduction in
services.
I
applaud your efforts in trying to bring people together in
this fight but I do feel that as we are a very fragmented
bunch of individuals we don't stand much chance of
achieving our aims.
It seems
to me that organisations such as Age Concern and Help the
Aged are about as much use as a chocolate teapot in this
situation as they appear to sit very much on the fence but
won't do anything positive to help in the fight.
I feel a
litle better to get this off my chest, keep up the
good fight.
Regards
At last there
are moves in Parliament to approve the Human Rights act in
relation to the residents of RSLs who had their rights to
challenge their landlord removed when they voted for
transfer from council to an RSL.
Regrettably , both the DCLG and the NFH oppose this. In
other words they do not think that the Human Rights Act
should apply to your landlord . Pardon me for saying this
but is this not a little over the top in the defence of
housing providers ? Some would argue that the tenants of
Council housing already had Human Rights before they
transferred to and RSL, and you cannot take away human
rights without that being a 'denial of human rights'. So
the advice to the DCLG and the NFH is to please stop trying
to deny tenants their human rights . It is a basic
entitlement enjoyed by all and it is not within the realms
of the DCLG or especially the NFH to seek to prevent
it