‘All Community Housing Providers, where adequately resourced to do so, should be working as Supportive Landlords’
Sean Kelly, Bethanie
‘A Supportive Landlord should listen & communicate with their tenants in an effective manner. They should be able to offer advice as to what services the tenant might need and enable the tenant to use these services.’
Community Housing Tenant
CHPs support some of the most vulnerable members of the community to be housed and to sustain their housing. The term ‘Supportive Landlord’ is often intertwined with the role of a CHP, however, there is little shared understanding of what a CHP is meant to be doing when they are acting as a supportive landlord.
In early 2021, Shelter commissioned Focused Solutions to carry out consultation with CHP representatives to find out what they wanted or needed to understand about being a supportive landlord.
The outcome of this was that CHP staff said they wanted to understand the language, context, tools and approaches to being supportive landlords and ensuring tenant wellbeing and tenancy sustainment. They wanted to know when to refer tenants to support services and what the processes and protocols were.
They were clear that they were not, and never would be ‘social workers’, but they needed to understand the language, context and key elements of what constitutes good practice.
This framework aims to describe the range of activities and strategies that can comprise a supportive landlord approach and by doing this, provide a greater role clarity for social housing managers, the homelessness support service sector, and the people who they support.
It is intended as a resource to enable CHP staff to develop an understanding of what it means to house people with complex needs, provide guidance and tools and discuss contemporary best practice.
It is not the intention of this framework to be a prescriptive model for all CHPs, but rather to enable CHPs to select the guidance and tools that suit their own housing practice and their legal and contractual obligations.
The Framework is designed to be self-paced in manageable, enjoyable and informative sections.
For optimal user experience the Sways are best viewed in full screen mode. To do this click on this expand icon in the top right hand corner on each of the Sways.
Please start your journey by clicking on the Introduction Sway below.
Chapter 1 - Housing Providers
Chapter 2 - Compliance
Chapter 3 - Supportive Landlords
Chapter 1 - Assessing Tenancy and Individual Wellbeing Risk
Chapter 2 - How to have Difficult Conversations with Tenants
Chapter 3 - Collaborative Decision Making using Case Conferencing
STORIES
Chapter 4 - Remote Supportive Landlord Management
Chapter 3 - Tenant Support Planning
SUPPORTIVE LANDLORD RESOURCES
OUTCOMES FOCUSED
TRAUMA-INFORMED
FIRST NATIONS TENANTS, TRAUMA AND RECONCILIATION
Chapter 4 - Person Centred Support
Chapter 7 - Motivational Interviewing
Chapter 8 - Strengths Based Approach
Chapter 9 - Property Standards
SUPPORT SERVICES
GOVERNMENT FUNDED SERVICES
SUPPORT FOR FAMILIES
HOARDING
FDV AND PROPERTY DAMAGE
Chapter 10 - Anti-social Behaviour
Family Domestic Violence and Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB)
Consumer Protection have produced a series of useful charts for both landlords and tenants:
Circle Green Community Legal (formerly Tenancy WA) have a series of very useful fact sheets:
Child Safety and ASB
Mental Illness and ASB
Chapter 11 - Managing financial risk
Chapter 1 - Drivers
Chapter 2 - Best Practice Approach
Chapter 3 - Tenant Engagement