Homelessness

We have a legal duty to give help and advice to anyone who is homeless or threatened with homelessness.

Some people are also entitled to accommodation from the local council. You are entitled to emergency accommodation if the council believes you fit certain legal criteria. To meet these you must be:

eligible for assistance
legally classed as homeless
in priority need.

If you are aged 16 or 17, you are normally entitled to housing and support from social services. In most cases it will be social services that have to take responsibility for finding you somewhere to live, rather than the housing department of the council.

What does being eligible for assistance mean?

If you apply as homeless, the council has to look into your circumstances to decide how it should help you. One of the things they will check is whether you are eligible for assistance. The rules on this depend on a number of things including:

your immigration status, and
whether you are ‘habitually resident’ in the UK, and
your country of origin, and
whether you are classed as a ‘worker’.

The law in this area is very complicated

Who is legally classed as homeless?

In deciding whether you are homeless, the council has to look at any accommodation you have access to. You should be considered homeless if:

you have no home in the UK or anywhere else in the world
you have no home where you can live together with your immediate family
you can only stay where you are on a very temporary basis
you don't have permission to live where you are
you have been locked out of home and you aren't allowed back
you can't live at home because of violence or abuse or threats of violence or abuse, which are likely to be carried out against you or someone else in your household
it isn't reasonable for you to stay in your home for any reason (for example, if your home is in very poor condition)
you can't afford to stay where you are
you live in a vehicle or boat and you have nowhere to put it.

The council has to look at your situation as a whole before deciding whether you are homeless.

What is a priority need?

You will normally be in priority need if one of the people included in your application falls into one of the priority need categories which includes households with:

a pregnant person
dependant children
vulnerable persons
some young people
and if your home is lost due to fire, flood or other disaster

Is this you?

Are you homeless or threatened with homelessness or do you know someone that is?
Do you or someone you know need help with rehousing?
Are you struggling to keep your home due to arrears or other issues?

If you answer yes to any of these questions, then you can seek advice from our Housing Options Team based at Erewash Borough Council, Town Hall, 1 Wharncliffe Road, Ilkeston.

The team is available for appointments every day (except Wednesdays) at our Ilkeston office.

You can ring for an appointment on 0845 907 2244 extension 3590, however, be prepared to give a few details at the time of your call to enable the officer to decide who you need to see and the urgency of your request.

Our first priority will be to try and prevent your homelessness and there are a range of options to achieve this i.e. debt advice, mediation, negotiating with family or friends, landlords and mortgage companies. The earlier you contact us, the better chance we have of preventing your homelessness.

If we are unable to prevent your homelessness, then we will need to complete a homeless application with you and, following a number of enquiries into your homelessness outlined above, decide what duty we have to you.

It could be that we have a duty to secure accommodation for you. However, this is not the case for everyone, and you may find that we only have a duty to provide you with housing advice. This will depend on your circumstances.

If we do have a duty to secure accommodation for you, we may not be able to do this immediately, and in these instances we would endeavour to find you temporary accommodation.

We currently have a number of privately leased properties, which we use for temporary housing of homeless families. For young people, we have access to a number of supported schemes. Bed and Breakfast is only used as a last resort.

We appreciate that it can be quite a stressful time not knowing what is going to happen to you or your family. We will try to keep you informed at all stages, but the sooner you approach us for assistance, the sooner we can try to help you to improve your situation.