A council will directly lease properties from private owners to reduce the reliance on hotels and bed and breakfasts as temporary accommodation for homeless households.
Leaders at Southampton City Council approved the private sector leasing scheme, which aims to provide an additional 16 properties for the local authority.
The council will use its £30,000 rough sleeper initiative funding to sign four leases per year, with a further £130,000 from its annual homelessness prevention grant for 12 more leases per year.
Deputy leader Cllr Simon Letts said this was one of the “tactical” moves being pursued to deliver better outcomes for people who find themselves homeless in the city.
“This is a wicked issue for local government across the country and really affects southern local authorities in that we have a lot of people that are in unsuitable accommodation, whether that’s families in hotels or bed and breakfasts and so on and so forth,” Cllr Letts said.
“They can’t establish a decent family life if can’t get their lives back on track.”
Cllr Letts said the current expensive reliance on nightly hotel and bed and breakfast rooms meant resources were not available to spend on other “pressing social matters”.
Under the new scheme, leases will be taken directly with property owners for a fixed period ranging between two and five years,.
The local authority will effectively become the landlord for this period and the property owner will receive guaranteed monthly rent from the council.
Homeless households, including families, single people and couples, will be given non-secure tenancies in the properties. The tenants will pay rent directly to the council.
The council said it will work with tenants during their time in the property to find secure and permanent accommodation either in the private rented sector or social housing.
A report to cabinet said since 2019/20, the number of homeless households approaching the council had surged by 64 per cent, with a further 14 per cent rise in the past 12 months.
Conservative group leader Cllr Peter Baillie said: “It is quite difficult to say this isn’t a particularly good idea but it also comes to mind you are looking at 16 homes, so as Cllr Letts said it is a pretty small number.
“That number pales somewhat when we still have hundreds and hundreds of homes which are voids.
“Last year we had 600 homes void. Had those homes been available for people to live in, we would have solved the homeless situation straight away at considerably less cost to the council than having them in B&Bs.
“I know the voids have come down, but in my mind, it still needs to be absolute top priority.”
Council leader Cllr Lorna Fielker said if voids were being turned over in a timely way, the local authority would still need temporary accommodation of some form.
She said the private leasing scheme was one part of the administration’s attempts to solve homelessness and temporary accommodation challenges.
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