Housing

Housing

Stirling District Citizens Advice Bureau is here to give you all the information you need to understand your rights and responsibilities when it comes to housing. We can offer free, impartial and confidential advice on renting or buying a home, finding somewhere to live, addressing problems with your landlord or what to do if you’re at risk of losing your home.

There are a wide variety of problems people can have relating to where they live. You might be facing mortgage difficulties, or need guidance finding somewhere affordable to rent, or perhaps you need advice on private sector tenancies  Some of the housing topics we cover are:

  • Renting privately
  • Finding a place to live
  • How to deal with mortgage problems
  • Getting repairs in a rented home
  • Council tax
  • What to do if you’re going to be evicted
  • Buying or selling a home
  • Problems with neighbours

 

Housing Advice Mediation Project & Education Resource Service (HAMPERS)

Based on the latest monthly data report from the 59 Citizens Advice Bureaux across Scotland (April 2022), the CAB network has received an overall increase of 31% for threatened homelessness advice and a 36% increase on actual homelessness advice from the same time last year. There has been a total of 743 pieces of advice given in April in relation to threatened or actual homelessness.

Alongside those figures, Stirling residents have been dealing with the rising cost of living which leads to significantly higher expenditure on basic essentials such as food and fuel.

As the cost of living crisis continues to squeeze household budgets to breaking point, more and more people will encounter problems maintaining their private tenancies. Most might not know how to access their rights as well as carrying out their obligations, and failure to do this will put a strain on the overall welfare of an individual and/or a household.

In response to this, Stirling CAB HAMPERS, funded by SafeDeposits Scotland Charitable Trust, can help private tenants & private landlords. Our HAMPERS worker, Joan McLaren can assist you in preventing homelessness and help you remain in your current property through advice and assistance & assistance with Court and/or First tier Tribunal applications where required.

The HAMPERS Worker will help with money management skills to empower you in relation to budgeting and look to boost your income and benefits. The HAMPERS Worker is also responsible for building good working relationships with Private landlords and stakeholders & the provision of information and advice that informs and enables good practice across the private rented sector in Stirling.

The services provided by HAMPERS are advising on: grounds for eviction, tenants’ and landlords’ responsibilities, Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs), rent arrears, security deposits and many other relevant issues in the private sector tenancies.

HAMPERS has also recently published a series of factsheets covering the main rights & responsibilities issues prevalent in the private sector, which you can find below.   

Please get in touch with us if you need support and help with your private rented tenancies/housing.

Contact us at 01786 451225Joan.McLaren@StirlingCAB.casonline.org.uk