The Cost of a Broken Model: Lease-Based Supported Housing

In recent years, lease-based Specialised Supported Housing (SSH) has quietly emerged as a fast-growing model in social housing — one that’s often framed as innovative, flexible, and responsive to the needs of vulnerable tenants. On paper, it offers a way to deliver housing for people with high care needs without the need for public sector capital outlay. Instead, private investors fund the homes, lease them to registered providers, and those providers, in turn, let them to tenants referred by local authorities.

But behind the scenes, this “asset-light” model comes with serious questions. Who’s really in control? What happens when the rent doesn’t cover the costs? And how much risk is being offloaded onto housing providers — and ultimately, the tenants themselves?

This isn’t just about spreadsheets or regulatory checklists. This is about homes — homes for people with complex needs, often vulnerable, sometimes voiceless. If the system propping up those homes is shaky, so too is the stability of the lives within them.

And that’s why this matters.