The role of housing associations in tackling veterans’ homelessness

By Kate Henderson, Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation

At the National Housing Federation (NHF), we support housing associations in their work to provide safe, affordable homes to people in housing need and to offer services that enable residents to live well.

Housing associations play an important role in efforts to end homelessness, and we are delighted to have been one of the partners, alongside Stoll and Homeless Link, in the delivery of the No Homeless Veterans campaign over the past year.

Providing a platform

An important part of the NHF’s work is to shape national policy, enable collaboration, and share insight across the sector. That’s why, throughout the campaign, we have provided a platform to make sure the message reaches people who are in a position to make a difference for veterans experiencing homelessness.

Last May, my colleagues and I joined other organisations from the housing and homelessness sector, alongside Armed Forces charities, MPs from across all parties, and local authority leaders, to launch the campaign at the House of Lords.

Since then, we have featured the campaign in a webinar, at our National Housing Summit, and at our National Smaller Housing Associations’ Conference, as well as in our ongoing engagement with our members.

Housing associations have responded enthusiastically. The campaign has enhanced their understanding of the scale of the problem, the particular needs of veterans and, vitally, the role they can play in meeting those needs.

Think veteran

Among our members are many organisations that already work with veterans, offering specialist housing and support. Some focus solely on providing homes for veterans, while others have committed to allocating a proportion of their social housing stock to veterans and their families.

But even those housing associations with no veteran-specific offer are likely to come into contact with former members of the Armed Forces.

The No Homeless Veterans campaign has been calling on general needs housing associations, as well as supported housing providers and local authorities, to ‘think veteran’, to include veterans in housing strategies, and to help ex-Service personnel find suitable housing and access support as quickly as possible.

Asking the question

Despite commitments in the Armed Forces Covenant and the help that exists for former Service personnel, there are still too many veterans in inappropriate accommodation, sofa-surfing, living in hostels which are not suitable for their needs, or homeless on the streets.

It is vital that all housing associations ask the ‘veteran question’. By identifying a new tenant as a veteran, staff can then discuss wider support needs and provide links to the broad range of advice and support that’s available. This could include specialist services, guidance on resettlement, or practical assistance like financial help with furniture, fittings, and white goods.

And to help housing staff do this effectively, the No Homeless Veterans campaign has produced a comprehensive set of toolkits, templates and training. These are valuable resources to help customer-facing housing staff think about and address veterans’ needs.

There are tools tailored specifically for housing associations, and we urge our members to use them. By doing so, we can all help ensure no veterans slip through the net and miss out on the support that’s right for them.

Homelessness prevention

As well as making use of the campaign resources, we encourage housing associations to develop close links with local authorities.

Under the Homelessness Reduction Act, public bodies have an obligation to refer anyone to a local authority if they are homeless or threatened with homelessness. Housing associations are not bound by this obligation. This is why we worked with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) to develop the Commitment to Refer.

Over 200 of our members have so far signed up, and we continue our efforts to promote this important homelessness prevention work.

More important than ever

Before we launched the No Homeless Veterans campaign, the positive impact of the ‘Everyone In’ initiative was still being felt. We’d seen a reduction in the number of people sleeping rough. As the campaign began though, the cost-of-living crisis took hold, and this has only intensified as the months have passed.

And just a couple of weeks ago we saw reports of sharp increases in both rough sleeping and in the number of households in temporary accommodation.

Homelessness is on the rise. That is why it is more important than ever to do all we can to support those in need – including our Armed Forces veterans.