Exploring affordability: what can housing associations do to better support their tenants?
This report presents findings from research looking at the issues affecting housing association tenants鈥� household budgets, what helps or makes it harder to manage and what else could housing providers or others do to more effectively support tenants and help budgets go further. A range of ideas were developed and reviewed through a series of interviews and group discussions with housing association tenants and staff. This report sets out some of the ways in which the role of housing provider could be enhanced to better support tenants with costs that exert pressures on constrained budgets, and can result in problems paying rent and affording other essentials.
The research was completed before Covid-19 hit the UK, however themes identified in the study 鈥� the importance of a decent home, dealing with pressure on incomes, digital inclusion, and the need for support with looking for work or with financial concerns 鈥� are potentially even more pertinent in the current climate. The research also included an evidence review of effective practice by UK housing providers and data analysis of housing costs and household incomes. The research was commissioned by Futures Housing Group, a social housing provider in the East Midlands.
Hill, K., Padley, M. and Stone, J. (2020) Exploring affordability: what can housing associations do to better support their tenants? 天堂视频, Centre for Research in Social Policy.
Home truths: Young adults living with their parents in low to middle income families
鈥屸�孉 growing proportion of young people in the UK are living with their parents well into early adulthood. This report has been produced as part of a project funded by Standard Life Foundation which aims to investigate the economic and financial challenges facing low to middle income families where young adults live with their parents. The report presents findings from the first phase of the study 鈥� comprising data analysis, a literature review and policy mapping - to provide a comprehensive look at the living standards of low to middle income families in what is becoming a 鈥榥ormal鈥� life stage for young people. The findings provide a profile of the extent and circumstances of such families and the financial and policy landscape they face. It highlights influences including increased housing costs, the precarity of young adults鈥� labour market experience, and changing social norms, but also the complex picture of determinants and experiences as co-residence is not clearly more common in better off or worse off families, and is not seen solely in positive or negative terms by those involved. Much depends on individuals鈥� circumstances, including on the transition points experienced in young people鈥檚 lives and on the resources that each of the family members can bring to the arrangement.
Hill, K., Hirsch, D., Stone, J. and Webber, R. (2020) Home truths: Young adults living with their parents in low to middle income families, Edinburgh, Standard Life Foundation.