What we don't know about housing and poverty

1. What we don't know about housing and poverty Hard work by James Gregory (Visiting Research Fellow, CASE, LSE)… …presented by Jim Vine (Director of Innovation, HACT) @jim_vine jim.vine@hact.org.uk

2. Overview • Relationship between housing and poverty • Particular reference to social housing • Existing evidence • Perceptions of the evidence • Social landlords • Think tanks

3. Context • Welfare reform • Housing benefit • Overall benefit cap • Provisions of the Localism Act (2011) • Allocations (local connections and working households) • Weaker social tenancy rights • Discharge of homelessness duty in PRS • Affordable Rent

4. Social landlord responses • Still building… • …for Affordable Rent • Diversification • Market rent • (Continued) market sale • Leisure centres… • Questioning purpose

5. Quantitative picture • Households Below Average Income (HBAI) statistical report • Limitations • Lowest income not necessarily lowest living standards • Relative income definition • Correlation between different situations and low income, but not causation • Quantitative, not lived experience

6. HBAI • Low income: below 60% of median income • Equivalised (household composition) • Measures • Before Housing Costs (BHC) • After Housing Costs (AHC) • Relative and ‘Absolute’

7. 9.8 million people

9. 5 million people “Half the poor” 1.9 million people 2.7 million people From: Table 3.4db

10. From: Table 3.4db

11. UK Housing Review 2014 (published yesterday so apologies for image quality)

12. Another view of poverty • Basket of goods approach • Minimum Income Standard (MIS) • Poverty and Social Exclusion (PSE) • PSE findings: • 33% of households not able to afford ≥3 necessities • 2.3 million households (1.5 million children) cannot afford to heat living areas • 2.7 million households (2.5 million children) damp • 600,00 children in homes with insufficient bedrooms

13. Another view of poverty • MIS 2013 findings: • Single people need to earn at least £16,850 a year before tax • Couples with two children need to earn at least £19,400 each

14. Housing and poverty links • Housing impact on income • (the BHC  AHC shift) • Housing impacts on material deprivation • Educational outcomes (overcrowding) • Health (damp, for example) • Mental health (sink estates)

15. Perceived knowledge gaps • “Are we there to just house the vulnerable, or actually make them less vulnerable?” • The role of social housing • (…and, implicitly, the ambiguous social and welfare function of homeownership) • Are social housing providers best-placed to intervene in neighbourhoods and individual’s lives?

16. Perceived knowledge gaps • “We are very pro mixed communities. But we would like more evidence about them.” • Better understanding of neighbourhood effects • Better understanding of tenure effects

17. Source: Ends and means: the future roles of social housing in England

18. References • Households Below Average Income (HBAI) statistical report (June 2013)https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/206778/full_hbai13.pdf • UK Housing Review 2014, Steve Wilcox and John Perry • Falling below minimum standards (PSE 2012)http://www.poverty.ac.uk/pse-research/falling-below-minimum-standards • A minimum income standard for the UK in 2013http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/MIS-2013 • Ends and means: the future roles of social housing in Englandhttp://eprints.lse.ac.uk/5568/1/Ends_and_Means_The_future_roles_of_social_housing_in_England_1.pdf

19. Any questions… • …that you want to answer? • Literatures on • Tenure effects – The Hills Effect • Mixed communities and neighbourhood effects • Roles of the tenures