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“What’s it like to be an applicant?”
That’s the question around which the homehunt® lettings system was created and continues to be developed. If you were looking for social housing, how would you want to be treated? Would you want to fill out a long application form where most of the questions seem irrelevant to your situation? Would you want to wait weeks, months or even years to be told a house had become available? Having waited patiently, would you want to be told that you have a week to make a decision? Or would you want to register quickly and easily? Give additional details only if you needed to? Start applying for properties that day? Choose which properties to apply for? Get useful feedback on how previous allocations were made and make real housing decisions for yourself based on that?
homehunt® was initially developed in partnership with Berwickshire Housing Association, a medium and high-demand provider, who have been operating it with great success since 2001. It is now used by Link HA, Servite HA, East Lothian HA, The Isle of Gigha Heritage Trust, the Northern Coalfields Property Company and the Borders Common Housing Register (including Cairn HA, Eildon HA, Scottish Borders HA and Waverley Housing).
homehunt® works equally well in high and low demand situations. Your lettings become easy to administer, completely transparent to your applicants, and void losses tumble.
homehunt® changes your lettings approach rather than your lettings policy. It offers empowerment, openness and choice to applicants, advocacy groups, carers, relatives and friends.
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So how does it work?
It couldn’t be easier really. Landlords still hold a register of applicants,
but only basic details such as the name and address of the applicant, and
the details of people to be housed are asked for initially, so registration
can be done ‘whilst you wait’. A Priority Pass system operates
so that “significant housing need”, e.g. homelessness, overcrowding
or health problems, are still recognised, which also means that information
and advice is targeted to those that make most use of it, rather than spreading
already thin resources across the whole service. When a property becomes
vacant, it is advertised at www.homehunt.info
and through other media such as newspapers, telephone information lines
or property information sheets, and applicants choose which to apply for.
A cut off date is given and allocations are then made from those who have
applied on the basis of who will make “best-use” of the property,
then on Priority Pass level, and then on date of registration - And that’s
it!
Finally, details of each allocation are published,
so that applicants get the information they need to make real choices about
their re-housing, and for landlords to make real decisions about the way
they manage and develop their housing stock.
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Downloadable homehunt®
lettings services leaflet
For more information view or download the following file:
simply
a better way.pdf 112kb
To view this file, you may need to
download Adobe Acrobat Reader version 5 or above, it is freely available
for use and can be downloaded from http://www.adobe.com
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Contact Us
If you want to know more about what homehunt® can do for your organisation including details of homehunt® single and multi-landlord systems, pilot packages and also our full Housing Management software product, contact
Katie Lyall direct on 0845 602 4543 or email administrator@homehunt.info.
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