My Social Housing - Using technology to match and facilitate social housing for the homeless.

Lockdown measures introduced to limit the spread of the virus have led to many people suffering job or income losses, leading to increased rent arrears and homelessness across the UK. Housemark estimate that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to 45,000 extra social homes sitting empty.

The current process for filling these empty homes is vastly time and resource consuming, meaning that despite 320,000 people being homeless in the UK, a majority of these home remain empty. Local authorities currently can only offer accommodation in the borough where they are an accepted homeless case and nothing else -- meaning if no properties are currently available then service users must move between temporary housing or face homelessness (waiting lists are often over 10-years).

Example: A service user is in Brent in Temporary Accommodation and is waiting in a B&B for secure and affordable accommodation. There is a void property in Harrow Council (neighbouring borough) that is vacant as no one from Harrow wanted the property. That property will sit vacant until the council can find someone for it. However, there is 90,000 other families currently in Temporary Accommodation in London, that would welcome the opportunity to be re-housed into a property in Harrow.

There is no current way or process to make these properties available and visible to all service users in the UK. UK councils are in desperate need of a solution to help match service users with available and otherwise empty social homes from outside their borough (either through a neighbouring borough or to another area with strong links such as family).

In order to address this critical issue, My Social Housing are developing an app that helps users find their own properties based on their individual criteria, such as location near family, work, school or other factors. The app requires proof of ID/income and fraud checks are completed, then MSH complete the application form on behalf of the user and send to the housing association to confirm viewing dates.