Islanders are being given the chance to have a say on how the Isle of Wight Council plans to prevent and relieve homelessness over the next 3 years as part of a new public consultation.
The Island is currently in the midst of a housing crisis. A recent needs analysis highlights an 82% reduction in the number of private properties available to rent on the Island in the past 2 years.
In 2019, the council launched its Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy with a bold ambition to end homelessness on the Island. It includes a range of commitments, intended both to help those who are sleeping on our streets or currently at risk of doing so, and to lay the foundations for a system focused on prevention, early intervention, and a rapid rehousing approach to recovery.
While good progress has been made with a number of successful schemes and projects making a real difference to people’s lives, the council says more needs to be achieved to ensure everyone on the Island has a suitable, safe and stable place they can call home.
Working closely with partners, the council has developed a new delivery plan for 2022-2024 — a document outlining actions to reduce homelessness and rough sleeping on the Island, focusing on prevention, intervention and recovery.
Proposals include:
- improving early intervention and targeted prevention measures to identify households at risk much earlier while also ensuring suitable support is put in place;
- introducing a variety of new packages to assist residents seeking to access the private rented market;
- supporting those in temporary accommodation and rough sleeping to enable faster identification of suitable private rented and social housing options;
- working with landlords and housing providers to maximise the range of affordable and sustainable accommodation available for those who are or become homeless;
- assisting households within social homes to RightSize to homes that better meet their needs to address under occupation and overcrowding;
- using all available powers to being empty properties back into use.
The council is encouraging people to have their say on the aims, principles and actions of the delivery plan by taking part in a public consultation which runs until Wednesday 23rd March 2022. You can complete the survey by visiting https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/iow_homelessness_consultation_2022.
Councillor Ian Stephens, deputy leader and Cabinet member for housing needs, says:
“Your views really matter.
“By taking part in this consultation you can help to inform us of potential changes that may be required to ensure we are able to combat homelessness and rough sleeping well into the future.”
A Cabinet paper on the homelessness strategy and delivery plan is due to go before councillors in the Summer.
£142.000 would be better spent on the homeless than digital signs to tell you the floating bridge is not working.
I am fortunate enough to share accommodation so I manage quite well even though i am now a pensioner. It is too complicated to make your housing needs known.
Make second home owners pay full rate council tax for a start and force developers to provide 50% social housing in any development.
They do pay full council tax.
I know I had to for five years before I moved here full time.
Maybe the rules have changed.
How about trimming down the odd golf course or two and installing a number of modern prefab lodges,nicely landscaped and not the type of holiday parks springing up increasingly,designed presumably to squeeze every last dime out of it’s inhabited residents (hostages) as can be seen such as in Ashey and other areas of natural charm,curtesy of unscrupulous and greedy,probably masonically linked business chancers at large across the island lately.? Hey..but that’s socialism innit?..we mustn’t impinge on the ‘rights’ of folks wishing to direct uncontrollable spheres into inaccessible orifices,using instruments ill adapted to the task ?
You will never stop it. All seaside towns are the same. Why be homeless in a city when you can move to the seaside. I am in Torquay at the moment shop doors full of the homeless……
There wouldn’t be a shortage if the council didn’t actively encourage tax payer funded house moves for benefit claimants and asylum seekers to the island
Why can’t they use the empty prisons?