The Definitive Guide on How to Use Homeless Law to Get Housed

How To Challenge and Win Local Authority Homeless Decisions

How to Get A Council House

This book is designed to help you or a client make the best use of homeless law to get housed as quickly and directly as possible.

Written in an accessible and easy to understand way, it gives you the tools you need to make the best use of the statutory safety net which is available to all.

Learn How to Use Homeless Law to Get Housed

Starting with an easy overview of how homelessness works, it explains what it requires your local council to look at and what duties it imposes on them. You are then guided through making your application for housing as successful as possible, by looking at each of the tests a local council applies and what it takes to show that you or your client fit within them. Finally if your local council turns down your application for housing, you are shown how to successfully challenge that decision to get it overturned.

This guide takes you through all of the little used duties, powers, loopholes and tests that can be used to help a person gain housing; one of the most valuable resources in the UK today.
By the end of the book you will have three new abilities:
1. Know what your local council should do when you approach them for help with your housing and what to do if they don’t.
2. Know how to get through each of the tests you have to pass to be considered eligible for social housing.
3. Know how to successfully challenge your local council if they turn down your housing application and get that decision overturned.

In short, you will know exactly how to make best use of the statutory safety net to get you or your client housed.
Comes with downloadable support documents.
The book comes with a whole bundle of support documents to download. These are the reference files you can use to help yourself or someone else to get housed. The zip file contains a selection of forms, letters, policies, guidance and further links, to help in establishing a person's eligibility for housing assistance.  You can download it via (legal) bit-torrent at bit.ly/gethousedfilebundle (just verify with an email address - no spam I promise) or from box.com at box.com/GetHousedDocuments.
Why This Book
I have worked for over a decade in homelessness, from carrying out front-line assessments and s202 reviews to strategy and policy development as well as training local authority staff in homelessness, decision letter writing and prevention options. This book is the result of that experience and carries many new areas of challenge and new ways around the homelessness tests. Ways that are little or never used by housing advice agencies. It is based on what works in real housing departments and written by an industry expert.

I have seen the effects of the government’s ‘homeless prevention’ agenda at first hand and have witnessed how individuals and support organisations struggle to understand what duties a local authority really have towards those in housing need and how to properly trigger those duties. With the availability of legal aid now diminished, it is more important than ever that those in housing need and organisations supporting such individuals, know how to ensure a person is given the help that they are legally entitled to. This book will show you exactly that.
Where to Buy:
The paperback version of get housed is available now at bit.ly/gethousedbook
Paper not your thing?  Get Housed is also available on Kindle:
bit.ly/gethousedkindle  

If you find 'Get Housed' useful please consider posting a review on Amazon or your website or twitter feed and let colleagues know about the book. It helps to get the word out and get more people properly informed and empowered. Many thanks!

Let me know if there is anything you would like included in a later version or you have thoughts or comments on what is most and least helpful to you. Your input will help to make subsequent editions of this guide as effective and useful as possible. Use the contact form or lyndenswift [at] gethoused . co . uk  Please share this page and spread the word. Many thanks.