A number of recent publications, including the Food Foundation (2022) and a report published last month by the House of Commons Library, have highlighted that the cost-of-living crisis is disproportionately affecting low income households. Research by Fitzpatrick et. al. (2020) suggests that tenants in the Social Rented Sector are particularly exposed to the impact of the crisis, as it has the highest proportion (60%) of households of three principal housing sectors who may be described as being ‘destitute’ (i.e., unable to afford two or more of a basket of essential items). It, therefore, does not come as a surprise that social housing tenants are finding it increasingly difficult to pay their rent and sustain their tenancies. It is vital, then, to highlight through research their experiences, which is the focus of the 'Holding on to home: tenancy sustainment in social housing' study.
Tag: Housing
Tackling Fuel Poverty – the Implications of Covid-19
The Covid-19 pandemic is hitting low income energy consumers hard. Short term policies have provided temporary help. However, in the long term we need policies to improve home energy standards.
Without ‘Home’ and Away from Children: Homelessness & Motherhood during Covid-19
Dr Emma Bimpson and Dr Kesia Reeve discuss the unique and profound challenges that COVID-19 is likely to pose to mothers experiencing homelessness.
Last year we completed a research study exploring the experiences of homeless mothers for the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE) and Sheffield Hallam University. Now that we are all adjusting to a life spent entirely at ‘home’ we have had cause to think about the mothers who participated in that research. It is difficult to imagine what the domestic circumstances described by those women – in the lead up to their homelessness and then afterwards – would look like in the context of COVID-19.
Gentrification and the Return of Class
A spectre is haunting Britain, not the spectre of communism, and yet the UK's most significant current challenges, from Brexit to austerity, from zero-hour contracts to changes in life expectancy, are all haunted by questions of social class and classes.
Public Spaces Protection Orders: a new, unregulated frontier in criminalisation
Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs) hit the headlines in May 2018 when the Guardian reported that hundreds of homeless people in England and Wales are being fined and imprisoned. PSPOs give local councils the powers to prohibit or require certain behaviours to take place within a defined geographical location
Building houses out of hot air? How the 2017 party manifesto housing plans stack up
The UK is a facing a housing crisis. Whichever party wins the election will be confronted by numerous problems including: a lack of affordable housing in many of parts of the country; the challenges associated with housing an ageing population; a housing stock which is showing signs of obsolescence and fatigue; a highly unregulated and unchecked private rental sector; the challenge of ensuring that younger households are able to access affordable; high quality housing and home ownership; and, increasing levels of homelessness and rough sleeping.
Sheffield Hallam key research partner in new ESRC centre informing UK housing policy
CaCHE will launch on 1 August 2017 for five years and will receive £6 million of funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), with support from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). A further £1.5m of funding will come from the consortium itself.