Tenancy Sustainment

Radojka Miljevic
So….

What is it?
What do we mean by ‘tenancy
sustainment’?

Eviction Preventing Supporting a

prevention ‘avoidable’ ‘thriving’ tenancy
tenancy failure

Ensuring the All the additional

tenancy runs Making sure support we give
its course people are in the
right homes

Everything we do!
Making distinctions

• General tenancy management

• Crisis support – the reactive work, often intensive and
case-based
• Tenant investment – either as maintenance or a step
up (programme/personal)
 Financial inclusion
 Employment and training support
• The ‘behavioural nudge’ approach
Questions to you…

How many of you have changed

what you do over the last few
years?
Why did you do that?
What have you learned from that?
Service delivery

• How is it delivered?
 Dedicated team / Across the organisation / External or
contracted
• Who needs support?
 Proactive: at-risk tenants – demographic, rent arrears history –
but also all new tenants
 In the middle: Early intervention at first sign of problems
 Reactive: rent arrears, change in circumstances
• How are tenants referred?
 Tenancy sign-up meeting
 Referrals from Income/Housing Officers or contractors
 Publicise offer so people can self-refer
Question: changed
circumstances

How do you identify

problems among existing
tenants?
What do we need to make it work?

• Define the key terms – what is ‘sustainment’ in our organisation?

• Joined-up approach – break down the silos, strategic overview
• Clear processes to empower staff to refer/ manage support
• Pre-tenancy work is a chance to set tenants up well
• Up-to-date info about tenants – who they are/support needs
• Proactive and reactive responses
• Additional expertise might be needed
• Resilient staff to cope with challenging cases
• Link between community investment & tenancy management
• Adapt promising ideas – don’t treat as blueprints!
 Interesting ideas
Pre-tenancy support
Curo Group
• ‘Passport to Housing’ partnership with CAB
• Identify who’s likely to be rehoused within 6-8 months (from housing
register)
• ‘Success plan’ agreed with each applicant
Sovereign - Preventative work with schools to teach young people about
tenancies. Also tenancy risk scores and audits
Staff training
Poplar HARCA – staff trained to spot abnormalities in residents’ income &
expenditure disclosures.
Paradigm - TS officers educate front-line staff so they can do the tenancy
sustainment job as well. Help officers to understand trigger points
What kind of innovation are you
aware of?
Things to think about

• How does our approach sit within our purpose?

• Can we be both enforcer and supporter?
• Value for Money agenda – how do we decide what to
do/ whom to help?
• How can we use customer insight?
• Some significant challenges
 Multiple challenges of a client group that’s at risk
 Do you refuse to grant a tenancy where it’s unlikely
to succeed?
 Measuring and monitoring this area
What are we starting to learn?

• Landlord anxiety around welfare reform has probably

stimulated improvement
• Knit learning into how you work…
• Do the small things right all across the interactions
with tenants
• The beginning of a tenancy (assessing risk etc.) is a
great opportunity – moving your approach ‘upstream’
• Engagement is important
• Everyone’s still learning – evaluation is young
Stimulating your thinking…

• http://www.hact.org.uk/sites/default/files/uploads/Archives/201
4/9/Tenancy%20Management%20report%20FINAL.pdf
• http://www.cih.org/sustainabletenancies
• http://scotland.shelter.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/3823
9/hal_pawson.pdf
• http://www.gha.org.uk/content/mediaassets/doc/full_tenancy_s
ustainment.pdf
• University of Queensland
• www.campbelltickell.com – forthcoming! Contact me later in
the autumn: radojka@campbelltickell.com