By Harold May*
I have spent the 47 years of my adult working life employed in social housing. I am therefore well aware of what constitutes best practice, and by the same measure, what evidences bad practice.
Due to a change in personal circumstances, I recently moved into a almshouse belonging to a local charity. It has opened my eyes to the nature of this sector, and left me feeling appalled at the lack of any effective regulatory control of almshouses.
An almshouse is a house or flat which belongs to a charity and which is rented out to meet its charitable purpose. Typically such charities are founded with the aim of relieving poverty and supporting those in poor health. Almshouses are one of the oldest forms of social housing in Britain, dating back to the 10th Century. They provide homes to more than 36,000 mostly elderly and vulnerable people.
Retaliatory Action
As I write this, my neighbor, Michael* is waiting for a court order to drop through his letterbox confirming his eviction. This is nothing short of retaliatory action by trustees of the charity which runs our almshouses because they correctly believe that he is about to whistleblow about allegedly unlawful activities. The charity’s trustees are accused of fraudulently awarding contracts to family and friends, and manipulating procurement procedures to derive personal financial gain from repairs and maintenance works.
Trustees have allegedly bullied residents and staff out of their jobs and homes for a variety of reasons, none of which are consistent with the charity’s aims and objectives. They have let out the properties to their friends and altered the charity’s objectives to allow properties to be occupied by applicants who had significant resources. This is in clear contradiction of the charity’s founding aims and aspirations which were to house those in financial distress.
A group of residents and their supporters, which include local district councillors, have lodged a formal complaint with the trustees and called for their resignation. The complaint was copied to the Charity Commission, the sole regulatory body overseeing almshouses, but there has been no response from the Commission or the trustees.
Residents of almshouses have no tenancy rights under any existing housing legislation. In December 2016, a court of appeal set the precedent by ruling that almshouses don’t offer tenancies. Instead, they award residents with a license to reside in their accommodation. This excluded residents from even the scant security and rights that accompany a tenancy agreement.
The charities that run almshouses are also free to unilaterally impose any rules they wish on residents, with no assessment of reasonableness. As a resident of an almshouse property, I am for example denied the right to have friends stay overnight in my flat. I am limited to a total of 28 nights away from my home, and therefore frequently miss out on opportunities to spend time with my children and grandchildren. Such rules are at odds with what most people would consider fair and balanced.
As things stand, Michael has no other recourse to any representation in this matter and is likely to be evicted. He has supplied the evidence of the inappropriate behavior of the trustees to both the Charity Commission and the Almshouse Association over the past five years without any helpful response.
No Scrutiny, No Regulation
The Almshouse Association is the sector’s mouthpiece and very effectively courts positive publicity about its members. However closer scrutiny reveals a negative and perhaps even sinister side to their activities. They believe that their members should be subject to as little scrutiny as possible, and have advised member organisations who had registered as social landlords with the Regulator of Social housing to de-register, and thus evade their albeit light-touch scrutiny. Indeed, they have developed a ‘de-registration kit’ to encourage this practice. Surely a landlord that prides itself on its high standards should welcome the light touch scrutiny afforded by registration.
The Charities Commission has shown themselves unwilling or unable to investigate complaints about almshouse charities, and this lack of effective regulation enables a cavalier attitude to tendering practices and leaves many opportunities for personal gain by trustees.
Almshouses only make up a small section of social housing, but it cannot be right that 36,000 residents are left to the whim of their landlord and denied even the basic rights of a tenancy agreement when renting from such landlords. It is a system that belongs to our feudal past because almshouse trustees can evict without having to give a reason and with minimal process, and the resident has no means to challenge them. As such, abuse of residents and restrictive practices are unreported and unseen.
With SHAC’s help, we are putting the case for almshouses to be required to formally register as social landlords and for residents to receive reasonable protections which balance their needs against those of the landlord.
Join the Action
If you are a resident of an almshouse, we are inviting you to contact us about your experience, and join us in putting our case to government. Please respond in the comments or via shac.action@gmail.com.
* Not their real names
28 September 2024
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