New research published by the Department for Work and Pensions explores possible explanations for the relatively high levels of worklessness among tenants in social housing. A separate, forthcoming, report will present the detailed research findings.
The research design focused on two key activities:
In addition, 30 in-depth qualitative interviews were also conducted with private rented tenants.
The main findings of the research include:
Right to Buy is the main route to home ownership from social housing, according to a new briefing paper from the Housing Corporation.
The Corporation's Centre for Research and Market Intelligence and the Chartered Institute for Housing produced the briefing paper, which looks at the customer base of affordable housing.
Part of a series of eight briefing papers, Planning for the Future, it sets out some of the key drivers of housing demand. The series aims to help inform and shape both strategic planning and housing practice within organisations providing affordable housing.
The briefing paper highlights how purchasing under the Right to Buy has been the main route from social housing into home ownership. In the example year (2004), 60,000 people left social housing via Right to Buy, 50,000 became private tenants and 22,000 became new homes owners.
However, new developments in Right to Buy have led to a downturn in sales in 2005-6. New policy initiatives, like Social HomeBuy, have not yet had a significant take-up. Shared ownership schemes are offering some tenants an alternative route into owner-occupation but numbers are very small compared with right to buy sales. Little is known about routes out of shared ownership as yet.
Most people coming into the affordable housing sector are under 45, and come either as newly forming households or from private rented housing.
The research also found that there are more single people and single parents in social housing than in other sectors and incomes are much lower than in other tenures. Less than half of working age households have jobs and social housing tenants are more likely to have an illness or a disability.
For further details - www.housingcorp.gov.uk
