CRIAS Light is a homelessness prevention and accomodation finding service for young people who don't qualify for Local Authority support, but nonetheless are facing homelessness. The service will commence on March 1st, 2011.
The new service for people aged 18-24
CRIAS Light is a service that CAYSH operated by CAYSH for people aged 18- 24 who want to rent a room in shared accommodation but need some support taking the first steps, not least financial support.
By providing this support to a targeted group of young people, CAYSH (and Crisis who fund the scheme) will continue to reduce youth homelessness. The service is funded by Crisis, the national organisation for single homeless people, who distribute a DCLG Government grant to various housing organisations across the UK, and here in Croydon Crisis selected us.
Is CRIAS Light for you?
The service provides a range of help for finding a room in a shared property – or none if you don’t want it – and financial assistance to overcome the hurdles of needing a month’s rent in advance and the Landlord’s deposit. As well as providing the Deposit Bond to Landlords and support with a month’s rent in advance, we also help with the paperwork for you and the Landlord to get things up and running.
As you proceed to finding a place to live, we are able to provide advice about how to make a success of living in shared accommodation, which from experience we know is especially useful if this is the first time you’ve lived away from home.
What makes you eligible?
You will be eligible for our CRIAS Light service if you are at risk of homelessness but fall outside priority needs legislation and have no history of homelessness. The aim of this service is to help you stabilise your situation and avoid the damaging effects of becoming homeless. To access this service we need to be sure that you are:
-
18-24 years of age
-
Single
-
Considered by the referral agency to have low or no ‘support needs’
-
Not entitled to housing support under any other statutory programme
-
Entitled to Government support in the UK
-
Considered able to maintain a tenance in a shared household
Accessing CRIAS Light
CRIAS Light helps young people who are referred from three specific agencies:
-
Croydon Council’s Housing Options Team
-
Croydon Turnaround Centre
-
Croydon Housing Aid Society
CRIAS Light is not a simple alternative to you saving up to fund a deposit, or getting family or friend to pay it. The referring agency and CAYSH will want to look at your finances to assure ourselves and our funders that you would not be able to access privately rented accommodation without our help. That is why we ask for agencies to refer only those who will benefit most to the CRIAS Light service.
Landlords we work with
We only work with registered Landlords with suitable properties. We help them fill empty rooms but in turn we demand that their properties are safe, well prepared, registered with Croydon Council and we know that they treat Tenants properly. If you are accepted under the CRIAS Light scheme, we will provide your Landlord with a Deposit Bond so that you don’t need to find the deposit. The bond covers your first 12 months and is then returned to us by the Landlord. Equally, if you are renting a room using Housing Benefit, we will arrange for the HB to be paid directly to the Landlord, in all instances.
Getting a room
Because looking for somewhere to live can be pretty daunting, we will help you consider the most important factors in choosing a place to live. Firstly, we will work with you on your budget, because in addition to the rent there is likely to be a service charge, covering all your utilities bills, and then you will need to eat and live a little. Before you attend your interview at CAYSH, you should set yourself a budget based on what you can genuinely afford.
Having a budget from the outset will make finding a property want more time effective and help you avoid disappointments. You should consider a number of other factors, like public transport, access to your place of work or college and so on, and how close your friends are. Moving somewhere new should be exciting in a positive way, but shouldn’t require you to cut links you don’t want to. You might well have started looking around for a place and that’s fine, but this leaflet is not confirmation of acceptance under the scheme – you will not receive that until after the interview.
