Supported Housing

Bambos Charalambous Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

While I welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement today that the local housing allowance cap will be lifted, I fear that the damage has already been done to supported housing providers, including women’s refuges.

I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips): housing benefit is vital to women’s refuges. As non-profit organisations, they rely on the rental income from the women who stay with them to fund their services. However, LHA is set in line with the lowest 30% of market rents in a given area, and the rates will often not even meet the refuge’s rent charges, let alone provide the additional funds needed to maintain specialist emergency accommodation. The capping of LHA led to uncertainty and fear for women’s refuges, which are designed specifically to keep women safe and to offer them shelter and support until they can live independently without the threat of violence.

This morning, I spoke to Mary Mason of Solace Women’s Aid, which is a fantastic organisation that runs a women’s refuge in my constituency and in other areas of London. She told me that women seeking help in the refuge she runs face the most appalling danger and have been forced into homelessness. She further told me that any decrease in funding, including through the LHA cap, would have a very negative impact on women and children in danger. It was therefore entirely inappropriate that services like the Solace women’s refuge should have been subject to the LHA cap.

While I welcome today’s announcement from the Prime Minister about the lifting of the LHA cap, I await the detail next week and hope that all vulnerable people in supported housing receive the funding they so desperately need.