Supported exempt accommodation: the privatization of poverty

Accepted Exempt Accommodation (SEA) is, according to Birmingham City Council, “housing where vulnerable adults are supported to live independently”. However, private landlords in North Edgbaston, Birmingham, are exploiting the benefits system for profit while providing inadequate accommodation.

Alex (not their real name) is 42 but looks 72 and is one of many residents in the North Edgbaston area of ​​Birmingham who live in a property classed as exempt accommodation. Talking to them, I discovered that they suffer from accelerated aging caused by poverty and that they are not optimistic about the future. “I doubt I’ll see 50,” they say. Their best friend died at 50.

Accepted exempt accommodations provide the minimum required

The key word is “support”. Residents have complex needs that cannot be addressed immediately and in the meantime they need a place to live. SEA providers are meant to provide this social support to ‘enable the resident to live or adapt to living independently within the community’. Alex refers to it as “a sick joke”.

In reality, it seems, there is little or no support, with one provider in Hagley Road telling a claimant: “We don’t look after you, we don’t have to do anything but give you a room.” Tenant reported: “It’s safer to live in a park than in provider rooms.” They said the room provided was damp, bitterly cold and the door did not lock properly, putting them at risk from other residents who were violent.

How does SEA work?

SEA providers earn income by claiming from the benefits system. It works like this: a resident is deemed to be in need of exempt accommodation and therefore the upper limit of how much that person can claim in terms of benefits is massively increased. This means that the housing provider, once they have received this person, can claim an unlimited amount of benefit, on the grounds that it is more expensive to support these people.

According to Birmingham City Council: “SEAs are exempt from the usual housing benefit rules, which set an upper limit (cap) on the amount of benefit people can claim.

“The reason for the exemption is that SEAs can be more expensive to execute. Insurance, repairs and maintenance can cost more for SEAs than general needs rentals.

“EA providers face a limit to how much they can claim from the benefits system, however this limit is much higher than traditional housing benefit.”

Makes sense. Housing people who have complex social needs can indeed cost more. However, if support is not available, as many EA residents claim, where does the extra money go?

Skid Row in Birmingham?

The current regulatory framework for exempt accommodation is weak. The government has not provided enough regulatory agencies to monitor the situation and Birmingham City Council is known, according to Inside Housing, to provide easier access to SEA benefits than its neighbors such as Sandwell and Dudley. This may be one of the reasons why Birmingham has such a high number of SEA applicants, at over 22,000 and growing.

Is this light touch the reason there are so many SEA properties in North Edgbaston? The council appears to have concentrated the SEA estates in Hagley Road and the top became Birmingham’s Skid Row. It is common to see sex workers on the corner of Hagley and Stanmore Roads. Sex work takes place openly, even in front of an MP who once visited the area, as desperate people beg for food outside Tesco. The Harborne walkway is littered with sexual waste and human faeces, and local residents often encounter SEA residents who slept in the small, wooded areas to avoid the dangers of SEA social housing, such as moldy rooms and violent residents.

A poor response stunts growth

In response, many locals turned to MPs, councilors and the police for help. Unfortunately, the police cannot provide the necessary resources to manage a growing problem. However, police have increased patrols in the area and have assigned a PCSO to Hagley Road. In addition, the local MP is hampered by a lack of regulation and local councilors are constrained by the complexity of organizing various agencies with little time and resources. For example, two local councilors have worked to bring together several agencies to address the issue of sex, but no agency has emerged in the area since the residents’ action group met, and that was over two years ago.

North Edgbaston will find it difficult to develop economically while this concentration of SEA properties exists. For example, there is an embryonic street with the potential to become a thriving social space. There is already a restaurant, shops and nail boutiques. However, the prevalence of anti-social behavior is creating a strain on the high street which is disappointing for shoppers. Private businesses cannot develop because some of the buildings they want to develop are next to SEA properties; no one wants to move into apartments or buy houses attached to a building that looks badly neglected or buy an apartment where other residents spend their time suffering from untreated mental and social problems.

The privatization of pain

The current government has succeeded in privatizing poverty, handing over its management to a set of housing providers who are exempt from effective managed regulation. The government-provided contract allows a provider to provide a minimal amount of assistance (if any) and gain access to the benefits system with few regulations on how much they can take from it.

Instead, the private sector provides nothing more than a roof over people’s heads, even if it leaks. Privatizing poverty makes every homeless person a beneficial commodity. Thus, they cease to be human and as long as they are dependent on exempt accommodation, they are profitable for the housing provider. So why would any supplier want to reformulate such a commodity? For them, big money is offered – an unlimited amount of continuous money. This is a business plan which, according to the 2022-2023 report of the parliamentary committee on Leveling, Housing and Communities, has allowed “unscrupulous landlords” to enter the market.

Where next – no one knows

The future is not at all bleak, although it is mixed. Birmingham City Council helped push for increased regulation and monitoring with its own scheme. However, Inside Housing reports that it “found that almost half of the city’s controversial housing units are below their own minimum standards”.

A new government is coming, or so we hope, one that puts people at the center of housing policy and not deregulation, neoliberalism and money. Labor can introduce a regulated approach, one that outlines set criteria that actually ensure independent living and where the provider must adhere to strict rules of human empowerment, not human emaciation. Until then, Alex may be right, they probably won’t see their 50th.

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