Social landlords are stepping in to tackle youth poverty

14 Mar 2017 01:05 PM

Initiatives run by social housing providers to help young people aged 16-25 increase their independence and employment prospects are helping to reduce youth poverty, says new research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

Researchers from the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research reviewed evidence from across Europe, analysed secondary datasets on housing and youth poverty in the UK, and undertook ten case studies of housing providers engaged in new schemes to address youth poverty across the UK.

 "We found that many projects run by housing providers have the potential to prevent or alleviate poverty amongst young people by improving personal skills, employability, confidence and the ability to maintain independent living," says lead researcher Professor Michael Oxley.

In developing these schemes, social landlords are going well beyond their expected role in providing a roof over people’s heads. "People ask us why they do it,” Professor Oxley says. “Quite simply it’s often because no-one else is taking the initiative."

The study finds that housing providers are currently addressing poverty among young people in three main ways:

• They run schemes to help people improve their incomes by finding work or gaining qualifications to enable them to find better-paid work
• They help young people manage their incomes better by providing financial and budgeting advice and support
• They can reduce housing costs by, for example, providing shared housing.
• Examples of successful schemes identified by researchers include:
• West Midlands-based housing association EMH’s full-time, nine-week traineeship for unemployed 16-24 year-olds lacking qualifications. The scheme included employability skills training, functional skills qualifications in Maths and English, and a work placement.
• Housing association The Hyde Group’s five-day training course which focuses on living independently, banking, borrowing, income, budgeting, debt management and benefits. The partnership-run scheme helped participants set goals for how they spend and save their money. It also taught how to read an electricity meter, plus skills for shopping on a budget and cooking. In its first two years of operation, the scheme’s 63 ‘graduates’ who had been at risk of falling into arrears had successfully kept their tenancies.

"Our quantitative analysis suggests that getting out of poverty is, for young people, often associated with other changes in their circumstances," Professor Oxley points out. Education, qualifications, employment, independence and mobility, in the broadest sense, can all be part of the route out of poverty.

Couple formation was found to be strongly associated with moving out of poverty. Of single parents who were in poverty in 2001 aged 16-25 but who had left poverty by 2011, four out of five were living with a partner and children, and only 12 per cent were still single parents. For single parents overall, nine out of ten remained in poverty.

Improving qualifications was also strongly associated with moving out of poverty in early adulthood: the likelihood of being out of work fell with each increase in qualification levels.

Actions by housing providers that promote such changes are therefore likely to help alleviate or prevent poverty, researchers say. The evidence shows that housing providers are having a positive impact on, for example, the employment prospects of young people through new training and education initiatives.

Despite their success, the future of these schemes is precarious, researchers warn. The initiatives are not the result of a national or local strategy for poverty reduction among young people, but are typically the result of local leadership and individual vision. Financially, none of the investigated schemes were cheap to run. Most worked with small numbers of young people and had high costs per client. "Funding is usually ad hoc and short term, and all the schemes investigated faced challenges to their financial viability and sustainability," Professor Oxley explains.

Rather than being embedded in a coherent set of wider actions designed to tackle a problem, the activities of housing providers are frequently ‘random events’ that receive very little recognition.

"To succeed in longer term poverty reduction, these activities ideally need to be embedded in locally-led strategy that responds to local needs and operate in less risky environments, where resources are secure for several years," Professor Oxley states.

Further information

• Professor Michael Oxley
  Email: mo389@cam.ac.uk
  Telephone: 001223 337118

Notes for editors

1. 'The role of housing and housing providers in tackling poverty experienced by young people in the UK: summary and conclusions' (November 2016) 
2. Full findings from this research project
3. The project was by funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and supported by the Public Policy Institute for Wales as part of the What Works in Tackling Poverty research programme. The research was conducted from 2014 to 2016, based at the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research, Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge. Researchers aimed to identify measures that work in tackling poverty amongst young people (16-25 year olds) who do not live in the parental home, with a focus on housing services and the role that housing providers can play.
4. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is the UK's largest funder of research on the social and economic questions facing us today. It supports the development and training of the UK’s future social scientists and also funds major studies that provide the infrastructure for research. ESRC-funded research informs policymakers and practitioners and helps make businesses, voluntary bodies and other organisations more effective. The ESRC also works collaboratively with six other UK research councils and Innovate UK to fund cross-disciplinary research and innovation addressing major societal challenges. The ESRC is an independent organisation, established by Royal Charter in 1965, and funded mainly by the Government. In 2015 it celebrated its 50th anniversary.
5. The Public Policy Institute for Wales (PPIW) is an independent research institution which aims to improve policy by increasing evidence-informed policymaking, particularly in Wales. Established in January 2014 and co-funded by the ESRC and the Welsh Government, the PPIW is hosted by Cardiff University and is a member of the UK's What Works Network.