A person is not intentionally homeless after deliberately leaving their accommodation where a supervening event meant they would have become homeless anyway.
Homelessness case law summary
Summary
The Supreme Court found that a person who voluntarily moved out of a hostel was not intentionally homeless, as an event that happened after they left meant they would have become homeless anyway. This is referred to as a supervening event.
Ms Haile was pregnant and the hostel only allowed one person to occupy the room. She moved out and had given birth by the time they authority decided on he homeless application. It would have been unreasonable for Ms Haile to continue to occupy the hostel after she gave birth. The local authority could not say that Ms Haile would have avoided homelessness if she had stayed in the hostel.
Background
Ms Haile was an assured shorthold tenant of a single room in a hostel. The letting agreement stated that only one person could occupy the room. In October 2011 Ms Haile left the hostel because she said that she was being affected by unpleasant smells caused by other hostel residents' cooking.
In November 2011, Ms Haile applied to the local authority for homelessness assistance. In February 2012, she gave birth to a daughter.
Intentional homeless decision
In August 2012, the local authority decided that Ms Haile was intentionally homeless. Ms Haile contended that she could not be intentionally homeless after February 2012. The single occupancy agreement meant she could not have returned to the hostel after the birth of he child. She argued that the test of intentional homelessness had to be applied based on the circumstances at the date of the decision.
The local authority's decision was upheld by the County Court and by the Court of Appeal.
The court's decision
The Supreme Court considered whether the reviewing officer was entitled to be satisfied that Ms Haile became homeless intentionally, given that she would have been homeless in any event by the time her application was considered. The court decided in favour of Ms Haile.
Distinguishing existing case law
The court distinguished the case from an earlier House of Lords decision in Din v Wandsworth LBC. In Din, the House of Lords concluded the test must be applied at the time the applicant left the accommodation in question, not at the time the decision is made. It accepted however that there had to be a continuing causal connection between the deliberate act and the homelessness existing at the date of the homeless application.
This meant a later event could be an involuntary cause of homelessness which would supersede the applicant's earlier deliberate conduct.
Cases after Din had provided examples of events that could interrupt this causal connection including marital breakdown or the breakdown of an arrangement for the payment of rent.
Reviewing the intentionality test
The Supreme Court found that it could not reasonably conclude that Ms Haile would not have become homeless but for her deliberate conduct in leaving the hostel. She would have become homeless anyway after her daughter was born because of the hostel's single occupancy rule. This would have made it unreasonable for Ms Haile to continue to occupy the hostel room.
The court held it was not a matter of the correct date on which intentional homelessness should be judged. It was a question of what the true cause of the present homelessness was.
Comment
The Supreme Court's decision left the question open of what other circumstances might count as an intervening cause of homelessness and break the chain of causation.
An example might be where an assured shorthold tenant leaves a property after a section 21 notice and a possession order but before the date on which the bailiffs are due to carry out the eviction.
An external change might be a supervening event. For example, where the tenant leaves a property shortly before a change in benefit rules takes effect which would have made the property unaffordable.
Whether the person must leave because of the foreseeable effect of an event is not clear from Haile. Some events cannot be anticipated, for example a relationship breakdown.
Need for an event
There must be an actual event to break the chain of causation, not just the possibility or probability of one.
Where a property is unheated or in such poor condition that it would become uninhabitable during winter, and the occupier leaves in autumn in anticipation, this would probably not break the chain of causation. The degree of harm is a matter of speculation and something unforeseen might occur to improve the situation.
Proximity of events
It is likely that the supervening event and the homelessness decision need to be relatively closely connected in time. An event that occurs year after departing the property is unlikely to break the chain of causation. For example, the destruction of a property by fire.