and claims the charity has been failing some tenants. it doesn't feel like home, it feels like a prison. it was destroyed, absolutely destroyed. i've never seen anything like it. we ask, is public money being exploited for private gain? it's a really wild west system i and the winners are the people creaming off quite often very large profits. - boats like this don't come cheap. most people would never have the opportunity to own a boat like this. it would cost you more than a couple of hundred grand, and you can see why. one just like this was bought by a property developer called paul o'rourke. here he is explaining his business model. we are a private limited company that buys properties for one price, develops them, and sells them for another and that's what we do as a business. there is a bit more to it than that. and it's all about the housing benefit that can be claimed to house vulnerable people who need support. the government calls it exempt accommodation. exempt accommodation is a particular type of supported housing which is exempt from having benefit regulations, which means you can charge a higher rent. while there are good providers of this type of housing, there is mounting evidence this taxpayer funded system is open to exploitation. it's a really wild west system and the winners are the people creaming off quite often very large profits. you and i are paying for this situation every day that we pay tax. paul o'rourke works closely with a charity called my space housing solutions. it is a registered provider of social housing. this is the village of north wingfield in derbyshire. in 2018, paul o'rourke bought arcam house here. my space took a 20—year lease on the property and used it to house and support vulnerable people. it's a really community—based village. is that it there? yeah. charlie hamilton—kay works with people affected by anti—social behaviour. by the middle of 2019, just weeks after tenants moved into arcam house, she was already dealing with problems. the behaviour was constant. drunkenness, loud music, suspected drug use. early hours of the morning, late hours of night, constant reports of calls to the police. it was really terrifying. armed police cordoned off the street a few months later when four masked men were seen running out of arcam house, one wielding a machete. all of the residents were immediately told to stay in their homes, doors and windows locked, not to come out until the police told them they could exit their properties. it was absolutely devastating for this community. mark taylor was a housing officer working for my space at the time. he says he'd been told to fill arcam house, and quick. i had issues from the get go with arcam. it always felt too rushed. with vulnerable tenants, their housing benefit is usually paid direct to the provider. it was just assess, assess, assess, assess, get it filled, get it filled. what do you mean get it filled? just get the property filled, get tenants in the property, we need to start claiming rent. they never felt like a charity. it was felt like a business. the tenants had dozens of convictions between them and some had had addiction problems. my space says all tenants should get at least three hours of support a week. my time was that thinly stretched that, was i able to offer them the support they needed? quite clearly, i wasn't, because it descended into absolute chaos. mark was worried about the impact on the village and the many elderly people who lived there. did you raise this with senior management? yes, i raised time and time again that the process was flawed and that we couldn't be putting drug addicts and alcoholics into arcam house. my space denies it was under pressure to fill arcam house. it says people are at the centre of everything it does and it is distressing that it failed some of its tenants and staff. arcam house was forced to close for three months after the machete incident. only then was charlie able to see inside. it was destroyed, absolutely destroyed. i'd never seen anything like it. furniture was smashed, doors hanging off the hinges in pieces, broken glass everywhere, human substances on the walls. evidence of drug use. my space says there were instances a few years ago where service levels fell below the standards it sets. it says lessons were learnt and procedures were improved. when property developer paul o'rourke bought arcam house, along with several other properties, he paid around £2.25 million and paired up my space with a property investor. my space signed leases with the investor and paul o'rourke sold the properties for 3.9 million, 1.5 million more than he paid, a tidy sum. what made the properties so much more valuable to the investor were long leases with rent paid for by the taxpayer through housing benefit. you've got people who are actively targeting people with support needs so that they can make money out of the situation, and that should not be allowed. paul o'rourke helped set up my space in 2012, and since then the charity has received around £100 million of public money. paul o'rourke says he's not been involved in the running of the charity since 2016. since then he's concentrated on his property business, enabling homes. my space and enabling homes are two different companies. they are. on paper, they are two different companies but in reality, they don't work separately. they work as one company and people have said, "oh, this is paul 0'rourke's housing association." this former employee believes paul o'rourke was still pulling strings inside the charity after he stepped away. we have disguised her identity as she feared speaking openly will affect her currentjob. is my space run like a charity? it is not at all run like a charity. i think it started out with the best of intentions and now the purpose feels like it isjust to make money. there were regular e—mails and meetings and going, "how many moves have you had this week? "how many moves are you planning for next week?" and any kind of churn is like they are talking about a tin of tuna on a shelf, rather than a person. my space says, as a not—for—profit provider, it only takes on property where there is demand. it says paul o'rourke isn't involved in decisions made by the board and all transactions with him and his companies are at arm's length. blackpool. and a block of eight flats. another property once owned by paul o'rourke and sold on to investors with the lease to my space. chris, jemma and louise, who have all struggled with their mental health, lived here from 2020 until late last year. it looks like quite a nice building. it does from the outside but when obviously you get in there, it's not good at all. there's so many bad memories here. what sort of things happened when you were living there? well, every day there was a door being booted in, the hinges off, kicking, screaming, shouting, swearing, and chucking drugs outside the window, and itjust feels like a crack house. my space says anti—social behaviour is not uncommon due to the vulnerabilities and complex needs of the tenants being supported. but louise says she didn't feel like she was getting much support. theyjust advise you to stay in, lock your doors, - and basically phone the police. how did it affect you? personally, myself, - i ended up having a really, really, really hard time with my mental healthl and my physical health. it didn't feel like a home, it didn't, it felt like a prison, actually like a prison. people living nearby say there is still serious anti—social behaviour here. i'm on the verge of breaking, can't cope with it. i've had enough, i just want to go. i can't do it no more, ijust can't, ijust don't want to live here. i hate it. my space says it is supporting those affected and rehousing two tenants who have been carrying out anti—social behaviour. my space says it provides bespoke levels of care, support and supervision for its residents. but we've been told that hasn't always been the case. steve andrews had a history of serious mental health issues and had previously tried to take his own life. his family says he was doing better, and in march 2019, he moved into a my space flat in skegness. this is why he was so excited, and, infact, i remember when mum and i said it almost seemed too good to be true. we felt like he would never be alone. things went wrong for steve from the start. his support officer only saw him briefly, twice in six weeks, and spoke to him once on the phone. his health deteriorated. he lost so much weight. he never spoke to me about having meetings with anybody. i felt like the support had completely gone. six weeks after he moved in, steve locked himself outside his flat. a my space officer helped steve get back in and noticed he was anxious, and that prescription drugs were scattered across the floor. it was in such... it was horrendous. it was dirty and there was stuff everywhere. you could tell he couldn't look after himself. anybody walking into that property would see somebody not able to look after themselves. it was a friday and steve was told by a my space manager she would ring his mental health team after the weekend. in the meantime, she made sure steve had a number for the crisis team. sue thinks that wasn't enough. what do you think should have been done? she should have dealt with it there and then, certainly not leave it from a friday through to a monday. that's a whole weekend of him struggling and feeling unsupported. it's disgusting. early on sunday morning, steve took his own life on skegness beach. they didn't do what they were supposed to do, protect him, by doing the updates, visiting him, making sure they know what's going on in their own buildings. i think that's where he was let down. my space says mr andrew's death was a tragedy and its sympathies remain with his families and friends. it says the coroner did not reach the conclusion that my space bore any responsibility for his death. we have discovered dozens more my space tenants have died. in a two—year period from june 2018, 47 tenants died. more than a third died as a result of natural, medical or unknown causes. four were alcohol—related. six people took their own lives. and there were 19 drug—related deaths. i think that is absolutely scandalous. that's a totally unacceptable loss of life. matt downie of crisis says his charity helps hundreds of people in exempt accommodation every year. these are chaotic individuals with complex needs. do not have to accept the fact that people of that nature, as awful as it is, will die? groups i don't accept it is inevitable, is not acceptable to people will die of overdoses. 0n the face of what you have described, the level of deaths would say that the support is not being provided. is 47 across a 2—year period a large number? it depends out of how many tenants, but it seems high. would that raise concerns with you, a red flag? we would be very concerned if, a, the provider had identified that itself and wasn't trying to do something and b, we'd be surprised if it hadn't come to us to talk about that. my space says it has spoken to the regulator and, while the death of any tent is tragic, there hasn't been a single safeguarding report, coronerfiling or serious incident review that has raised an issue of negligence by my space in any way. so far, i have discovered there have been serious problems for some desperate my space tenants. i want to know how many my space properties used to be owned by paul o'rourke and how much money he has made. here's one in east yorkshire. in 2019, this block was bought for £800,000. it was leased to my space and then sold for almost 1.6 million, all on the same day. paul o'rourke says, after expenses, the deal made him just shy of £400,000. the individual you are describing has worked out how this system can be exploited. you can bet for sure he is not the only person who has worked that out. it may well be he's not done anything illegal, but morally it's got to be questionable and, in terms of how we want our housing benefit to be spent, it must be completely wrong. documents from the land registry show paul 0'rourke's companies have done more than a hundred deals including properties leased to my space. it's not easy to work out how much profit his companies have made because we don't know what expenses he might have had on the transactions but if you add up the sale prices and take away the purchase prices, you get a grand total of around £63 million. paul o'rourke disputes this figure and says it's very misleading. he says it doesn't account for significant costs, such as taxes, renovations, financial support for my space, as well as legal and other fees. he also denies doing anything immoral. but could there be a conflict of interest between the charity and the property millionaire? i have been past evidence, internal documents that raise more questions about paul 0'rourke's relationship with my space after he says he stepped away in 2016. it shows he was invited to my space board meetings and was copied into charity e—mails. we showed this evidence to an expert in charity law. mr 0'rourkes was personally involving himself in the management of the charity. do you think it's an appropriate relationship? i regard it as totally inappropriate. we've learntjust how financially dependent my space was on paul o'rourke. in 2020, he donated virtually all the money my space says it spent supporting its tenants, £6 million. he had a stranglehold over the charity, was able to get the charity to do whatever he wanted, because they relied on him. they were dependent on him. we have also discovered that paul o'rourke owed the charity a small fortune, £4] million. my space say £2.2 million has been repaid, with the rest due next month. documents from 2018—2021 appear to show my space agreeing to pay loans at the request of paul 0'rourke's company, enabling homes. it sounds to me as though paul 0'rourke's companies were using the charity as a sort of bank, a convenience. they would apply to the charity for the money instead of going to their own bankers. paul o'rourke and my space both strenuously deny he has undue influence and say he is a one of a number of suppliers. mr o'rourke says he has not attended a my space meeting since 2014. my space say there may have been very short term loans and is now investigating. here in bolsover, derbyshire, the local council tried to take on my space. this is the block of 16 flats that is run by my space. the council hands out housing benefit on behalf of the government but, in 2017, it refused to pay the charity the £360 it wanted for each one—bedroom flat. itjust didn't stack up. they are charging more for rent than everybody else, itjust didn't feel right to me. how can i put it? it didn't sit comfortably with me. at a rent tribunal earlier this year, the council argued paul o'rourke was indirectly profiting from high charges my space were charging. thejudge didn't agree, saying he had seen no evidence to suggest impropriety, and the rent was fair. i showed councillor fritchley some of the documents from our whistleblowers. they show there is a link between paul o'rourke and my space, and that's why we failed in front of thejudge because we couldn't establish the link. i think, if we got this documentation, we would have established that link. he has now paid my space hundreds of thousands of pounds in backdated benefits. i'm not best pleased. and who is paying the price? the public are paying the price and footing the bill. that is our annual check to the christmas markets. he used to always enjoy that, mainly for the food. lindsay bessell�*s 21—year—old son, nick, has been a tenant with my space for four years. he lives in enfield house in bolton, anotherformer paul o'rourke property. nick is autistic and doesn't want to appear on camera, so he said his mum can speakfor him. he looks really happy. he was happy. lindsey says her son has been badly let down by my space. sometimes he doesn't see people for weeks, they constantly change the day and the time they are coming. when the housing support officers do arrive, how long do they stay? they probably stay about 5—10 minutes. they ask him, has he got food in, or are his bills paid — well, they should know that — and then theyjust go. last year, my space produced a detailed report intended to justify its claims to higher rates of housing benefit. it said it provided all its tenants with personal care, including supervision to wash, dress or cook for themselves. that's the first i've heard about it because, even on his care plan, it doesn't include personal care and he's never had personal care and that's never been mentioned ever to us. no—one has ever cooked him a meal or physically made sure he has got food in or gone shopping with him. that falls down to me. providers of personal care must be registered with the care quality commission. we asked them about my space. they told us the charity's registration to provide personal care lapsed in 2017 and hasn't been renewed since. my space says it now intends to register with the cqc. it says its records show nick was contacted regularly but it has launched an investigation into his case. my space have consistently told us there is nothing inappropriate about paul 0'rourke's relationship with the charity, but we have discovered some members of my space�*s board have connections to him or his businesses. my space says it is looking at its governance procedures. as a result of engaging with panorama, trustees, who are employees or former employees of mr o'rourke or his companies, will be stepping down from the board in the coming weeks. the regulator of social housing is worried about other charities having close relationships with property developers. as a regulator, we talk about this being a probity issue. the registered provider should be doing things in its own best interests and for the best interests of its customers and sometimes these deals look like they are being made in the best interests of other people, and not the tenants, and where we see it happening we try and act as a regulator to stop that. as a registered provider of social housing, my space is being looked into by the regulator. but the charity has now applied to come off the register, saying it will make no difference to the services it can provide or the money it can claim. it will mean less scrutiny. there are calls for the regulation to be overhauled to better protect tenants and taxpayers. this is a national scandal because at least £800 million of taxpayers money is going to pay for this form of exempt accommodation. we think there is somewhere around 150,000 people living in this situation, so the only way forward is for the government to grasp this problem, grasp the seriousness, the size and the severity of it, and to deal with it in a comprehensive way. the government says there are many excellent supported housing providers, but it says it has recently announced new laws to protect residents and give councils stronger powers to intervene, backed by an investment of £20 million. meanwhile, tenants and their families say theyjust want to be supported well enough to live in peace. i'd like my space to do what they said they were going to do initially, which is to support my son, improve his standard of living and feel safe in his own home. this is bbc news. i'm david willis. our top stories: a fire at a russian ammunition depot is being blamed for the evacuation of two border villages, as explosions are reported at an airfield in russian—occupied crimea. in ukraine, the un chief says any damage to a nuclear plant would be suicide. on a visit to lviv, he calls for an end to fighting near the facility but hopes for peace remain. there has been some progress. ukraine and russia still are not talking to each other but they could reach future agreements with the united nations and turkey as brokers in the middle. a usjudge unseals documents that authorised the fbi to search donald trump's florida home. we'll get the latest from our correspondent in the us.