Supported Housing People Ltd, home

About SHP

Ideas the sector can use.

Supported Housing People Ltd works with local authority approved providers, registered providers, local authorities and the NHS. Our frameworks, including Value Generation and the case-law based eligibility framework for intensive housing management, are published openly so the whole sector can use and build on them.

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Intensive housing management and maintenance are support, supervision, and sufficient.

The Supported Housing Blog, May 2026

Our contribution

Ideas that shaped the sector

A record of thinking that has entered the sector’s vocabulary, and its policy.

2005

Intensive housing management

Michael Patterson reintroduces the term to describe much of what enhanced Housing Benefit funds, and later develops a Housing Benefit eligibility framework for it, underpinned by case law.

Value Generation

A values-based quality framework

Outcomes for people, cost benefit to the public purse, and wider social value.

Partnership

The Exempt Accommodation Project

A community of good practice and a subsidy recovery mechanism for councils.

2025 to 2026

The coproduced SHROA response

A sector-wide consultation response whose licensing logic the government adopted.

Our people

Leadership and associates

Everyone at SHP brings direct, personal experience of additional needs within their own family, alongside professional experience across supported housing, social care and the NHS.

ST

Director

Sharon Townsend

BA MBA MSc

Over ten years in business and project management within the NHS, with a particular interest in what supported housing offers the NHS and its place within Integrated Care Board structures. Sharon leads SHP’s strategy, management and administration.

MP

Associate Consultant

Michael Patterson

In supported housing and social care since the 1980s. A writer, commentator, speaker and operational expert who reintroduced the term “intensive housing management” in 2005, developed the case-law based framework for its Housing Benefit eligibility, and devised the Value Generation framework.

AP

Projects Officer

Alexander Patterson

BA MA

Coordinates the Exempt Accommodation Project, including leases and management agreements between providers and registered providers. Runs SHP’s training and briefing events and researches case law for Housing Benefit claims.

A Black woman working carefully through case papers at her desk, in a bright office

Our principles

Collaborative, forensic, and on the side of good provision.

  • Open. We publish our thinking so providers, councils and commissioners can use it freely.
  • Non-adversarial. Revenues and Benefits colleagues need an audit trail as much as providers do. We give both sides the same evidence.
  • Selective. We only work with local authority approved supported housing providers, and we have long spoken out against property-led models with no commitment to residents.