How to rent a home from us | Citizen Housing

How to apply

Ready to find a home that’s right for you and your family? We’re one of the UK’s most trusted social housing providers, and we’re proud to run and manage 30,000 homes across the West Midlands. The best way to rent a home from us is through your local council’s choice-based letting scheme or a similar alternative.

Find your local council

How to rent a Citizen home through choice-based letting

Choice-based letting is one way of applying to live in the affordable homes offered by social housing organisations like us.

How do I use choice-based letting?

To get started with choice-based letting, you need to first apply through your local council.

Next, you’ll be put on a waiting list where the council will assess your circumstances and prioritise your application based on urgency.

After this, you can start bidding on homes you’re interested in. It’s likely other people will be bidding on the same home. If you are the bidder with the highest priority, we’ll check your application and then decide if you can move in.

If you have a question about your application, you should contact the council handling it.

How we decide who lives in a Citizen home

Eligible

When you apply for one of our homes, we take into account a number of factors to help us decide if you’ll be offered it, including:

whether your home will meet you or your family’s needs
if we think you can afford the rent
your previous tenancies
if we think your tenancy will be successful
if your tenancy will impact other customers
the level of support you might require

Find your local council to apply

What information do I need before applying?

Before you apply, you should have the following information available as you’re likely to need it during the application process:

Proof of ID (i.e. driving license, passport)
Right to Rent Share code (if applicable)
Payslips
Benefits notices
Tax credit notices
P60s
Rent information
Council tax bills
Utilities bills
Recent bank statements
Childcare bills
Loan information
Food bills or receipts
Insurance information
Information about any other existing financial commitments, like child maintenance or travel costs

We've gone digital

To make your application quicker and easier, our pre-tenancy assessment is now completely digital. That means don’t need to fill in any paper forms, and you won’t have to wait for our system to process you – your details will go straight onto our system.

Our digital process also means you’ll need your own email address, which we’ll also use to sign you up for your new My Account profile on our dedicated, secure customer portal.

If you’re one of our existing customers and you want to move home, you’ll need to check the contact details and email we have for you is still up to date.

Find out more about My Account