Home/Care providers/Veterans' Supported Housing

Care-sector property

Property for veterans' supported housing.

Maine Property Solutions is a property company. We find, prepare and manage buildings — we do not provide care, support or supervision, and we are not registered with CQC or Ofsted. Care and support in any property we manage is provided by the registered provider, not by us.

We are looking for our first placement in this sector. Tell us the specification and we will look for it.

Veterans' supported housing is a small, tightly funnelled sector with an operator eligibility rule that decides at the outset who can be in it — and a private company is not on that list.

Tell us the specification

Who buys it

Who buys it — Veterans' Supported Housing

The Office for Veterans' Affairs holds the budget and the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust distributes it. Central government money, distributed by a trust, rather than a council commissioning cycle.

Who is registered, and who is not

Who is registered, and who is not — Veterans' Supported Housing

There is no care regulator in most of this sector. What there is instead is an operator eligibility rule that matters more: the operator must be a charity, a housing association or a registered social housing provider. That rules a private company out of the operator seat entirely and leaves the landlord seat as the honest one.

How it is paid for

How it is paid for — Veterans' Supported Housing

A time-limited central grant funds the wraparound support, with the housing costs met through the ordinary housing benefit route. Time-limited means the support funding has an end date, which is a real risk to price into any long lease.

What the property has to be

What the property has to be — Veterans' Supported Housing

Accommodation for one person at a time rather than for families. That is a clear brief and it points at studio and one-bedroom stock, or at shared houses with the HMO consequences that follow.

What the lease looks like

What the lease looks like — Veterans' Supported Housing

The lease counterparty is the charity or housing association operating the scheme. Where support funding is time-limited, a lease term running past the grant is a question the operator has to answer before a landlord should sign.

What the building has to carry

What the building has to carry — Veterans' Supported Housing

Ordinary landlord duties plus HMO licensing where unrelated adults share: fire risk assessment, gas safety at intervals of no more than twelve months, five-yearly fixed wiring inspection, alarms, furniture fire safety and freedom from serious hazards.

Honest limits

What is not possible here

We can never be the exempt-accommodation provider

Exempt accommodation — the housing benefit category that carries this part of the market — must be provided by a county council, a housing association, a registered charity or a voluntary organisation. Maine Property Solutions is a private limited company and is none of those, so we can never hold that status. What we can do is let a building TO an organisation that does. Anyone implying otherwise, including us, would be wrong.

Being exempt accommodation does not exempt you from HMO licensing

The word exempt in exempt accommodation refers to housing benefit, not to licensing, and the two are routinely confused. Being exempt accommodation does not exempt a building from HMO licensing. Mandatory licensing is triggered by five or more people in two or more households; what kind of occupancy agreement people hold makes no difference to whether a building is an HMO; and the single care setting that regulations lift out of the HMO definition is a registered care home, which is not what any of this is. Additional and selective licensing schemes can catch a property below the mandatory threshold as well.

The line, drawn plainly

What we can do, and what we cannot

What we can do

  • Find property against a written specification — size, layout, location, adaptation, tenure and the compliance set the building has to carry.
  • Prepare it: works, furnishing, certificates and the paperwork a provider or a commissioner will want to see before it takes the building on.
  • Manage the building afterwards, if that is what is wanted — repairs, contractors, certificate renewals and the landlord side of the relationship.
  • Put the proposed terms, the works and the timetable in front of you in writing before anything is committed.

What we do not do

  • We do not provide care, support or supervision, of any kind, to anyone.
  • We are not registered with CQC and we are not registered with Ofsted. A landlord letting a building to a care provider is carrying on neither regulated activity and has nothing to register.
  • We do not employ, supply or manage care or support staff, and we make no claim about the vetting of anyone else's.
  • We hold no framework place, no contract and no position on any supplier list with any council, health body or government department.
  • We hold no care-sector placement anywhere. Maine Property Solutions operates two properties, both in Coventry, and has no managed instruction in any sector.

Your Questions

Questions we get asked

Not covered here? Tell us the specification and we will answer for your situation.

Could Maine Property Solutions operate a veterans' scheme?

No. The operator in this sector must be a charity, a housing association or a registered social housing provider. We are none of those. We would be the landlord, letting to one.

Who refers residents?

Referrals run through one national pathway, so the whole of the demand arrives through a single funnel. That is unusual, and it makes the operator relationship the whole game.

Is the funding permanent?

The support funding is a time-limited central grant. That is worth knowing before agreeing a lease term that runs past it.

What size of unit is wanted?

Single-person accommodation rather than family accommodation. If you instruct us, we would source against the operator's written specification.

Have a specification and no building for it?

Tell us what it has to be

Call Free Appraisal