Frontline: Housing officer

“I work as an officer at a housing association. My job is to help with any queries tenants have about issues such as whether they can keep pets or move house, or how to deal with problem neighbours. It’s a fairly large organisation: we have a couple of thousand tenants just in my town. These tenants are a mix of people: the elderly, big families, single mums, the low paid and unemployed, and vulnerable people who can’t read or write very well, have a disability, or are alcoholics or drug addicts.
On the whole, the tenants are really nice people. They are just like you and I, but might not earn very much or have had the opportunities I’ve had. They are good, decent people who are really thankful if you manage to sort out whatever issue it is they’ve got.

However, we do have some troubled families who are the cause of anti-social behaviour. Usually it’s noise – either loud music, or shouting and swearing – or neighbours falling out with each other. If it’s really bad, we can get the police involved; but we have to get the evidence of anti-social behaviour first. For example, I had a guy today who phoned up to say that his family was getting dog mess thrown in their garden. He didn’t know who was doing it but he wanted to move. I told him he had to find out who was responsible. You never know whether they are making things up because they want a new house.

It is very hard for a tenant to move once they’ve been allocated somewhere. Like everywhere in the country, we have a shortage of housing: there are about 20 people waiting for every property. So once you’re in, you’re in.

Despite this, the tenants can be really ungrateful. I went with a girl to view a property recently and there were tantrums and crying because she didn’t like it, even though it was a really nice place. A lot of people would bite your hand off to live somewhere like that. I told her she had to take it or she’d end up at the bottom of the list and homeless.

We won’t give people a bigger house just because they have had more kids. As long as when we first put them in the property it wasn’t overcrowded, we tell them it was a lifestyle choice to have more children so isn’t our responsibility. They don’t like it when we say that.

Really the only way they can move is by a ‘Mutual Exchange’. The idea is that if a tenant can find someone to swap homes with, they can do so. They could go anywhere in the country, but it’s got to be a suitable property. The move cannot result in any over- or under-crowding, for example. It’s not a new idea – despite the government claiming that it is – but they are becoming increasingly popular. When I first started this job, I would do three a week; now it’s three a day.

A Mutual Exchange is good for the tenants, as it means they’re able to move house. But it’s expensive for us. For example, we have to check they are telling us the truth about the number of children they have. We also have to do safety checks on the homes. So if a property has problem neighbours, for example, and families want to move on quickly, we have to repeat the checks every time a new tenant moves in, which is unnecessary and costly. And unfortunately we don’t do checks on neighbours.

We are trying to encourage older people to move into smaller properties. However, we don’t have enough one-bed properties to go round. The government has said it is going to penalise people by reducing their benefits for every bedroom that is unoccupied. But that’s really unfair if the reason they’re still living there is because there isn’t anywhere else for them to go.

I think this penalty policy is part of the emerging Universal Credit system. For us, Universal Credit is not good news at all. Currently, housing benefit comes directly to us; but under the new system, the tenant will have to pay us direct. I know it’s about learning budgeting skills, but the idea that people on such low incomes will keep their payments up-to-date is unrealistic.
There will be the feckless tenants, who will just spend it; and then you’ll have those who genuinely want to pay their rent but something will happen – their car will break down, say, and they can’t get to work unless they fix it. Then next month something else will come up – like needing a new fridge. And before you know it, more tenants will be in arrears, and there will be more conflict and more evictions, which isn’t good for anyone. The government definitely needs to rethink this aspect of Universal Credit.”