Housing with Care
Housing with Care is affordable social housing with spaces ‘designed in’ for people needing care and support from others.
Sometimes called ‘supported living’, Housing with Care helps adults live more independently. Housing with Care can suit people who live with physical disability and/or who have autism, progressive dementia or learning disabilities.
Care can be intermittent or permanent. When embedded in communities, Housing with Care can transform lives.
The Need for Housing with Care
The need for Housing with Care (sometimes called ‘supported living’) is growing across the UK. The ‘baby boomer’ population is ageing. People with neuro-diverse conditions including autism and learning disabilities are living longer, happier lives. New treatments permit people to be discharged from hospital back into the community more quickly.
However, the UK housing stock is failing to keep up with these challenges.
There is an acute shortage of Housing with Care in England and in the devolved administrations of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The reasons are:
The private housing market fails to offer sufficient choice and diversity within social housing delivered as part of planning agreements with local authorities.
‘Affordable’ housing, defined by the UK government as 80% of market house prices, is simply unaffordable. Houses prices have outstripped the ability of people on low wages to pay rent, deposits and mortgages.
Few local authorities in England have used new financing powers to build social or ‘council’ housing directly. They could increase the amount of Housing with Care by working with their own care commissioners on their own land.
There are 1,300 regulated housing associations (“social landlords”) in England. Most receive public subsidies from taxpayers. They provide 2.8 million homes for 6 million people. Frequently they adopt a conservative approach to residential building development in the belief that Housing with Care is too complicated, too small-scale and time-consuming.
Private sector housebuilders restrict building ‘types’ to conventional expectations of market demand. Commercial models are not inclusive. They overlook the prevalence of disability, ageing and the needs of people who live more solitary lives, with or without disability.
In summary, Housing with Care is regarded by many housing providers (in both public and private sectors) as novel, expensive, disruptive to business models, complicated and challenging.
Unless these hurdles are overcome, the UK will continue to fail to provide decent, well-designed homes for the growing number of people who not only need somewhere to live but who also need help with living.