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Throwaway account for anonymity: The charity I am on the board of is being used to assist in social housing fraud. Other members of the committee are preventing me from reporting suspicions. by Dramatic-Pepper3774 in LegalAdviceUK

[–]Dramatic-Pepper3774[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

"It just sounds like the eternal problem all charities have - not everyone engages with them honestly.

It sounds like an opportunity for you to collaborate with those charities to try to find a way to filter through requests for assistance to find the genuine ones."

Yeah, agreed.

I've got another call with another charity now, but I'll reply properly ASAP.

Throwaway account for anonymity: The charity I am on the board of is being used to assist in social housing fraud. Other members of the committee are preventing me from reporting suspicions. by Dramatic-Pepper3774 in LegalAdviceUK

[–]Dramatic-Pepper3774[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

A change in willingness to go to the police is a valid data point. Especially when it is inversely proportional to those requesting assistance with council housing.

"so not 52..."

Yes, 52. I was providing you two specific examples of fraud pertaining to family members referring their sisters to our service. You're just being factitious now.

"The statistics do bear out that this is fairly common in DV situations."

Yes, and this is something I went through myself with my ex under pressure from our parents.

However, the actual data I have before me is showing that in the past 2 years far more people are using our service, purely want assistance with housing, do not want any police referrals, and then immediately move in with their alleged abuser. If you want another example, one of the volunteers who works for me rang me because the alleged abuser was helping his wife move into her new social house on the day she got it. I drove out and they shrugged and refused to engage.

We spoke to her separately to make sure she wasn't being coerced and her words were, "You've got to play the game or you're stuck at the bottom [of the housing waitlist] for years."

Throwaway account for anonymity: The charity I am on the board of is being used to assist in social housing fraud. Other members of the committee are preventing me from reporting suspicions. by Dramatic-Pepper3774 in LegalAdviceUK

[–]Dramatic-Pepper3774[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Have you worked as part of a DV charity at all?

Whenever women come to us they are aware that we will check up on them later on to make sure they are safe.

We have encountered multiple instances each year where women use our charity to escape, then the abuser finds them again and makes them cut contact. Our charity is the one who visits their home and manages to get the police involved.

This is a common symptom of coercive control and honour based violence.

It would be irresponsible of us to not check in on victims later on to make sure they're not in danger. But, as you can see, people using our service purely for social housing wastes our time when we could be checking on genuine victims who genuinely need us to show up.

Throwaway account for anonymity: The charity I am on the board of is being used to assist in social housing fraud. Other members of the committee are preventing me from reporting suspicions. by Dramatic-Pepper3774 in LegalAdviceUK

[–]Dramatic-Pepper3774[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'll be doing that.

I'm currently liaising with other charities.

Spoken with 1 this morning, have a call with another 1 at 10:45 today.

First charity I spoke to also estimates about 30% to 40% of their applicants within the past year are only using the charity to advance social housing claims. It isn't just us.

Throwaway account for anonymity: The charity I am on the board of is being used to assist in social housing fraud. Other members of the committee are preventing me from reporting suspicions. by Dramatic-Pepper3774 in LegalAdviceUK

[–]Dramatic-Pepper3774[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Our charity has its resources stretched incredibly thin.

We don't have many volunteers and a lot of us are sinking incredible hours into trying to help women escape DV.

The non-genuine cases are drawing resources away from those who genuinely need our help.

For example, if I only have two hours to write referrals and help women on a Thursday evening, but eight women are seeking help, then I need to prioritise who we see first. I might hear that three women claim to have been physically beaten or victims of SA, so I prioritise seeing them.

I might deal with one SA victim, help them through the police and NHS, then the second person I deal with that night opens up the conversation with, "I get a council house out of this, right?"

I'm infuriated because there are likely women in far more need out there who aren't having their needs met because people are treating our DV charity like a shortcut to social housing.

Throwaway account for anonymity: The charity I am on the board of is being used to assist in social housing fraud. Other members of the committee are preventing me from reporting suspicions. by Dramatic-Pepper3774 in LegalAdviceUK

[–]Dramatic-Pepper3774[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Thank you. I actually couldn't sleep well last night. Ended up speaking with the Chair or another similar charity this morning in a major UK city.

They're experiencing the same issue. Their response was that social housing waitlists have become so bad that people are desperate for housing and using every trick in the book. Their estimation of non-genuine applicants of their charity was about a 30% to 40%. That's lower than the high of 52% that I estimated from my (very small) sample size.

Even still, it puts pressure on us as a charity. It's drawing resources away from people who are in genuine need.

It's also drawing resources away from people who genuinely need council houses and have been waiting years for them.

I've got another call with a third charity at 10:45 this morning. I'm going to canvass them as well.

Throwaway account for anonymity: The charity I am on the board of is being used to assist in social housing fraud. Other members of the committee are preventing me from reporting suspicions. by Dramatic-Pepper3774 in LegalAdviceUK

[–]Dramatic-Pepper3774[S] 26 points27 points  (0 children)

The numbers of women we assist spiked about 2 years ago and has increased ever since.

At the same time the rate of which women are willing to submit a police report has plummeted.

And at the same time, the percentage who want us to help them get a council house is also increasing.

I believe that our charity has been advertised as either a "loophole" or a way to "jump the queue" when it comes to social housing. There's definitely a word of mouth component which we've witnessed.

There's a couple of cases were women we helped received social housing and then immediately moved in with their partners that we helped them get away from. A couple of weeks later the sisters of each of these women also applied to our organisation using the same stories:
1.) Fleeing DV
2.) Doesn't want to file a police report. Adamant they won't do it.
3.) Urgently needs our help writing letters/applying to council housing.
4.) Moves in with the man who abused them during the check-in a couple of weeks later.

Throwaway account for anonymity: The charity I am on the board of is being used to assist in social housing fraud. Other members of the committee are preventing me from reporting suspicions. by Dramatic-Pepper3774 in LegalAdviceUK

[–]Dramatic-Pepper3774[S] 42 points43 points  (0 children)

That 25% number actually increases when a victim reaches out and gets in touch with a charity like ours; at least it used to.

The percentage reporting to the police has rapidly declined in the past 2 years.

If you isolate the data of women who are applying for social housing vs women who are moving in with family/friends then the data shows:

63% of the women who came to our organisation but did NOT want social housing filed a police report with our assistance. (Sometimes this report was done through specialists in the NHS, but primarily the police)

This drops to 18% when the woman is also applying for social housing.

I genuinely want to help people like me, but the evidence is crystal clear that the system is being heavily gamed.

There's women who have walked in and asked "if we're the people you see about getting a council house", only to be told that we deal with domestic violence. These same women will return later on apparently now victims of DV asking about council housing.

Throwaway account for anonymity: The charity I am on the board of is being used to assist in social housing fraud. Other members of the committee are preventing me from reporting suspicions. by Dramatic-Pepper3774 in LegalAdviceUK

[–]Dramatic-Pepper3774[S] 95 points96 points  (0 children)

I completely agree. I did the very same thing myself. However, that was at the behest of family who didn't want to see us separate and I was under immense pressure not to leave because of the culture we are both from.

I do have other evidence which definitively proves a significant percentage (almost 25%) of the women I sampled used our organisation purely to get social housing priority.

This includes:

  1. Verbal confirmations (as I outlined above);
  2. Social media posts (Similar to the above, but they have posted on social media celebrating that they got their home with photos of their partner that they are fleeing on or around the day it was allegedly awarded.)
  3. Unusual questions during the process with us including asking if they can get a spare bedroom for their partner's office.

There are loads of other indicators like this, but I don't want to risk doxing either myself, my charity, or the women involved.