Posted 07.10.16 ,p>Workers living in social housing face a 'pay penalty' compared to those in other types of accommodation, a new report from the Social Market Foundation (SMF), supported by Circle Housing, reveals.
The report - Moving Up: Higher wages for social housing tenants - shows that average hourly wages among social housing tenants are very low compared to the economy as a whole.
The report calls for the new government to support providers of social housing to improve the employment, training and wage progression prospects of their tenants.
Key findings from the report:
The report identifies a number of factors that drive down wages, including low skill levels (with 45% of tenants having no recognised qualification); lack of access to training; caring responsibilities; prevalence of work-limiting health conditions (affecting one in three working adults in social housing); and geographical factors such as access to jobs.
The National Living Wage (NLW) will help address the problem of low pay in the social housing sector, with more than a third seeing a wage increase by 2020 due to the NLW. But, the report calls for much wider action to drive social mobility.
Click here to download the report.
