WDH has teamed up with Housing Perks to enable its tenants to contribute to their rent accounts by using discounts on their day-to-day shopping.
With the Housing Perks app, WDH’s tenants can buy vouchers for all major supermarkets as well as many other all high-street shops and receive discounts on the vouchers, with the discounts being automatically applied to the tenants’ rent accounts.
By using the Housing Perks app, WDH has found that tenants contribute around £5 per shop towards their rent and arrears. This is alongside WDH’s analysis of its tenants’ budgets which showed that tenants in arrears had an average deficit of £3.15 per week.
Leanne Brown, care and health manager, WDH, said, “Our financial inclusion toolkit has helped us achieve a low rate of arrears. Despite this, tenants still face an average deficit of around £3 per week which can be a barrier to clearing their arrears.
“By co-creating a solution with Housing Perks, we’ve made it easy for tenants to automatically allocate their shopping savings toward rent. We’re thrilled with the results so far, and tenant feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.”
WDH reported that half of its tenants using the Housing Perks app were already in arrears and were actively making payments. Furthermore, 90 per cent of tenants who contributed towards their rent with the app went on to make additional contributions to their rent accounts.
