Home & housing
Kinds of home and area
Four routes hold almost everyone in England: an ordinary tenancy, shared ownership, Shared Lives and a registered care home. They differ in who owns the place, who inspects it and what survives a change of support. The area is a fifth decision, and it hides inside all four.
Last checked on 3 September 2026
What are the four routes?
A tenancy, in a flat or a house, from a council, a housing association or a private landlord. Shared ownership, where part of a property is rented and part is owned, which suits an adult with some money of their own and no wish to hold a whole mortgage. Shared Lives, where an adult lives as part of another household, with the arrangement made through a scheme that recruits and supports the household rather than through a landlord. And a care home, registered and inspected, where the place and the help arrive together.
What a route is, and what it is not
A route is the shape of the arrangement: who owns the building, what agreement the adult holds, and who answers for the support. It is not a building type and not a label on a door. Two flats on the same street can sit on different routes, and two homes described in the same words can sit on different ones too, which is why the paperwork rather than the description is what tells you where you are.
Which of the four comes with a tenancy in your own name?
The first, and it is the reason renting is the route most of this handbook is written around. An ordinary tenancy is an agreement in the adult's own name, with the rights that go with it, and it is the spine of supported living explained: the support is bought separately and arranged around a home the adult already holds. Where the tenancy is shared with other adults, the same agreement sits behind each of them, and what that changes is written up in living alone or sharing.
What is Shared Lives, in plain words?
An adult moves in with a household that has been recruited for the purpose, and lives there as part of it, often for years, sometimes for good. The arrangement is made and kept going through a scheme, and the person who opens their home is supported and paid through that scheme rather than hired directly by the adult. Beyond that plain description this page does not go, because the detail belongs to the scheme and to the agreement signed with it. What matters for the purpose of choosing is the shape: the adult is a member of a household rather than a tenant of a room, and that shape decides what happens if the arrangement has to end.
What does the area change?
The house that fits and the map that works are two different tests, and a move usually passes one and fails the other. A bungalow with a wide bathroom in a village with one bus a week is a bungalow that is hard to leave. An area decides which council holds the case, which practices are taking new patients, whether the shops are walkable and how many of the assessed support hours are spent in a car. It also decides who is nearby: a smaller house within reach of the people who matter beats a better one an hour away, and neither fact appears in a form. Say the area out loud when a move is discussed, because nobody else will.
What holds the decision together?
The plan. Section 24 of the Care Act 2014 sets out the steps the council has to take, and section 25 is titled Care and support plan, support plan. A choice of route is only as real as the lines it occupies in that document, and when the plan is reviewed the route is reviewed with it: changing your support covers how that happens and what to do if it stalls.
Care Act 2014, sections 24 and 25. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026.
How does the building change what can be fitted?
Not every route takes an adaptation in the same way. A tenanted home can usually be altered with the landlord's agreement, and the path from assessed need to fitted rail runs through the plan and the budget: daily living and aids follows it end to end. A room in a care home is altered by the organisation that runs the building, and residential care homes explains what that arrangement does and does not guarantee. Shared ownership sits between the two, since part of the property belongs to the adult and part does not.
Which route do people start with?
The one they already have. Most moves are not from nothing but from somewhere, and the honest question is usually whether the present arrangement can be reshaped before it is replaced. An extra rail, a different rota or one fewer night of support is a smaller change than a new address, and it is the change to test first, because it keeps the front door, the neighbours and the route to the shops that already work.
Sources read for this page
- Care Act 2014, revised text on legislation.gov.uk, version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026
- Care and support statutory guidance, Department of Health and Social Care, updated 22 July 2025
Each source above was opened on 3 September 2026. Where a page here prints a section number or a figure, the source line beside it names the version that number was read from.