For People Looking for a Place to Live
Our housing team finds, provides and maintains good homes for the people we support – people like William, Fred, Meg and Emily, and we also act as landlord for many people supported by others.
We know that finding a safe and suitable home in the right place can be really difficult, particularly for those leaving an assessment and treatment unit. Although most of our housing is sourced in line with an individual’s needs, with a stock of around 1000 properties we may just have the right vacancy available at the right time for you.
Housing Management
Our nationwide housing team works with our tenants to keep tenancies in good shape and to adapt people’s homes in line with their changing needs.
Our tenants have high levels of choice and control over their homes, including a matching service to make sure tenants are compatible with new housemates.
We provide easy-read tenancy agreements (including video easy-read) and face-to-face support to make sure our tenants fully understand their contracts.
The team can handle a wide range of different situations. We provide housing management and/or maintenance and we own property and also lease from others. Usually, we provide the support, but occasionally the tenant is supported by another provider. We’re flexible, we hold high standards, and we take pride in being good partners.
Find out what our tenants say about us in the Dimensions Listening and learning report 2020-21.
Specialist Housing Brokerage
Few other support providers offer a dedicated team of housing brokers.
- In Weymouth, we’ve worked exceptionally hard alongside partners including family, the NHS and the local authority to find and buy a new home for a young man at risk of entering ATU. This may sound routine, but we’re dead proud of this – there were some nail-biting moments!
- In Gateshead, we’re working in a brilliant partnership with Places4People to secure social rents for people with highly complex needs, and working with them to adapt the property accordingly.
- And in Sheffield, we’ve recently worked with a housing association to enable a particular individual to move to a more suited location – we’re tracking incidents and expecting these to now fall considerably.
With years of experience, our supported housing brokers can advise both local authorities and families on:
- Finding suitable properties
- Renting a home and tenancy agreements
- Renting from private landlords, the local authority, developers, families, or a housing association
- Buying a property, including shared ownership
- Property maintenance.
- Assistive technology
Developments
We don’t build intentional communities. We do create places where people with learning disabilities and autism can live vibrant lives within their local city, town, or village. If you’re a landlord, developer, commissioner, or investor why not talk to us?
- In Sheffield, we’re working with NHS (England) and the local authority to finance and rebuild a property that will eventually provide five fully self-contained flats in a vibrant local community for young autistic people transitioning into adult support.
- In the St Albans area, following planning approval from the Secretary of State and working with Homes England, we’re building on a brownfield site to provide individual flats and bungalows for nine people – once again, in the heart of a local community and with assistive technology central to the design.
- In Essex, we’re partnering with a local developer and the council’s adult social care team to build three flats tailored to the needs of the people we support there.
Further Information
We are a Registered Social Landlord and Registered Provider of social housing, owning some 260 properties. In relation to supported living we have over 140 different contracts with local authorities, covering over 800 supported living properties, and we are an accredited supplier to over 70 local authorities.
What Dimensions does about… (easy read guides)
What your home might be like (easy read)
Contact us
To talk to us about finding housing in your area, or to work in partnership with us to develop new homes, contact our housing team on 0300 303 9194 or enquiries@dimensions-uk.org.