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Homes for Cathy introduces EDI and co-production aims with updated homelessness commitments 

Homes for Cathy has updated its commitments for housing associations with a renewed focus on EDI and working with people with lived experience, following feedback from members. 

The move comes as official homelessness figures show nearly 45,000 households in England were assessed as homeless in the three months to December 2023, up 16% from just under 39,000 during the same period in 2022. 

Homes for Cathy’s updated commitments now include a pledge ‘to understand and remove the barriers that disadvantage some applicants with a background of homelessness, including people from ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ community and migrants, from accessing housing association properties’, reflecting the disproportionality of minority groups in homelessness statistics. 

In a further revision to the original pledges, the group is urging housing associations to ‘work with stakeholders and people with lived experience of homelessness to provide a range of affordable housing and services which meet the needs of homeless people in their local communities’. 

Additional updates call for more detailed monitoring of allocations to homeless households, support to maintain ‘at risk’ tenancies and support for previously homeless tenants to ‘access the essential items they need to make their property a home’. 

The commitments – first launched in consultation with Crisis in 2018 – were created as a framework for housing associations to prioritise their efforts to end homelessness and benchmark progress.  Over 90 housing associations and around 30 affiliated homelessness charities have joined the Homes for Cathy alliance and voluntarily signed up to the commitments. 

Homes for Cathy chair, David Bogle, commented: 

“Six years since we launched the original Homes for Cathy commitments, we felt the time was right for an update to better reflect how our members are using them, make clearer some of the core aims and set some new objectives to underpin what housing associations need to do to play their part in ending homelessness. 

“We recognise that housing associations face competing challenges, from high inflation and higher borrowing costs, through to stronger consumer regulation, requiring difficult trade-offs. Yet, amid this backdrop, we believe housing associations still can – and should – make it a strategic priority to tackle homelessness.  The updated Homes for Cathy commitments provide a simple set of homelessness KPIs that any housing association can adopt and by which their board can hold them to account.” 

Download a copy of the updated commitments

Want to learn more about how your housing association can embed our updated homelessness commitments in your policies, provision and practices? We’ve teamed up with the National Housing Federation to host an online event ‘Updating the Homes for Cathy Commitments’ on 1 July 2024. Click here to find out more.

Refreshing the Homes for Cathy Commitments 

Earlier this year we held a members’ meeting and strategy day at which we asked the question ‘Are the Homes for Cathy commitments still workable and relevant?’. The answer to the question was a resounding ‘yes’, with both our members and stakeholders concluding that the commitments remain as applicable now as when they were introduced in consultation with Crisis in 2018. However, feedback from attendees was that the wording of some of the commitments could be improved and additional objectives included to reflect best practice.  In response, we have refreshed the commitments to incorporate the following recommendations: 

  • If housing associations are improving on Commitment 2 around flexible allocations, Commitment 3 around solutions for people who are not eligible for an offer of a home is not needed. Commitment 3 may also duplicate the responsibilities of local authorities. Instead, the onus should be on housing associations working with their local authority partners to remove barriers to accessing housing associations properties that disadvantage some applicants. 
  • Moreover, by monitoring refusals, housing associations can gauge their performance on Commitment 2. 
  • The pledge under Commitment 4 to not make homeless any tenant who wants to prevent their homelessness should go hand in hand with tenancy support. 
  • The phrase ‘vulnerable tenant groups’ in Commitment 5 is stigmatising – rather than being vulnerable, some people experiencing homelessness are disadvantaged and underserved by existing policy and practice. 
  • Positive action is needed to address inequality, discrimination and the over-representation of minority ethnic groups in the homeless population, including migrants. 
  • People moving from homelessness need to be able to make their property a ‘home’, rather than ‘ready to move into’ – the latter phrase is too open to interpretation. 
  • Services and policies need to be designed in co-production with those with lived experience. 

The new Homes for Cathy commitments we are proposing are: 

  1. To contribute to the development and execution of the homelessness strategies of local and combined authorities.    
  1. To work in partnership to provide a range of affordable housing options which meet the needs of all homeless people in their local communities.  
  1. To work with local authorities and others to understand and remove the barriers that disadvantage some applicants with a background of homelessness from accessing Housing Association properties.  
  1. To operate flexible allocations and eligibility policies which allow individual applicants’ unique set of circumstances and housing history to be considered and monitor refusals to benchmark performance.  
  1. To understand the inequalities that result in the over-representation of ethnic minorities among people affected by homelessness and commit to meeting the needs of ethnic minority groups, including migrants.    
  1. To not make any tenant who is engaging with their landlord homeless, by offering support to maintain at risk tenancies.  
  1. To design policies and service provision in co-production with people who have lived experience of homelessness and other stakeholders.  
  1. To ensure that new tenants moving out of homelessness have the essential furniture, flooring and other household items they need to make their property a home.  
  1. To lobby, challenge and inspire others to work to end homelessness. 

We are asking our members and stakeholders to complete this survey to gather feedback on the changes to the commitments.  Please complete the survey by Friday 28 July 2023. 

The feedback will help us to ensure that the commitments remain a workable framework for our member housing associations to challenge themselves to do more to end homelessness and by which their Boards can hold them to account.  

Complete survey