Researchers are conducting the UK’s first major scientific trials to establish whether giving homeless people cash is a more effective way of reducing poverty than traditional forms of help.
Poverty campaigners have long believed that cash transfers are the most cost-effective way of helping people, but most studies have examined schemes in developing countries.
The new study, funded by the government and carried out by King’s College London (KCL) and the homelessness charity Greater Change, will recruit 360 people in England and Wales. Half will continue to get help from frontline charities. The other half will get additional help from Greater Change, whose support workers will discuss their financial problems then pay for items such as rent deposits, outstanding debts, work equipment, white goods, furniture or new clothes. They do not make direct transfers to avoid benefits being stopped due to a cash influx.
If homelessness here is defined as rough sleeping then I don’t think this will work. For one set of rough sleepers – teeange runaways etc – there is already a large and very effective charity network. Which usually finds and sorts out within a couple of days of rough sleeping. Not entirely solves etc, but does distinctly help.
Then there’s the hard core of rough sleepers. And as we’ve discussed here many a time it’s not, in fact, either money or even housing which is the problem here. It’s the ability to stay in housing once its achieved – stay in the face of the significant addiction or mental health – or both – problems being suffered.
That is, there’s a portion – small, but it exists – of the population who cannot deal with this Care in the Community idea and who would be much better served by a looney bin. Which, of course, we don’t have any more, not for these halfway but not fully competent cases.
More money, aid into housing, it’s just not the solution for them. Of course, it is for the teen runaways. But they’re already being aided. So, no, I don’t think this is going to work. A claim might be made, after the experiment, that it has but I’ll still be v doubtful. Because – and here’s a prediction to be run against whatever result gets announced in time – they’ll count the teens as housed sa being success when they would already get there under the current dispensation. And I don;t think they’ll have – not long term – success with the dipsos that are the hard core of the problem.
I had a friend who used to hand out McDonalds vouchers to the homeless.
As much as one tries, it is not possible to get smashed on vanilla milkshakes.
Also, as I used to tell the missus about beggars :
Look at their shoex.
The usual whinge about handouts to the abos in Alice Springs is that the blokes get the cash and spend it on booze.
The do-gooders thus suggest that more be given to the birds. To pay for housing, food etc.
To be fair, I actually know bugger all about the situation.
There’s a regular that haunts my local Tube station (and others in the area) with a sign and a dog on a string. He’s not homeless, he has a council house. Why he chooses not to stay in it instead of begging in all weathers, god only knows…
Why he chooses not to stay in it instead of begging in all weathers, god only knows…
WFH doesn’t suit everyone….
I imagine the tax free income from begging + social housing + UC etc is better than most low-paid work.
On more or less the same topic, why do the people who run The Big Issue not care that every seller of their publication is some sort of Eastern European gypsy/begging gang-member?
If you throw food out in your garden, you attract rats and seagulls.
Giving money to the “homeless” has a similar effect.
The other half will get additional help from Greater Change, whose support workers will discuss their financial problems then pay for items such as rent deposits, outstanding debts, work equipment, white goods, furniture or new clothes. They do not make direct transfers to avoid benefits being stopped due to a cash influx.
If they want to save some some time & money & they can give me a ring. I’ve actually tried to do this stuff in recent years. And in not so recent for that matter. I’ve a bit of a history of trying to dig people out of the shit they’ve got themselves in. A by-product of knowing the sort of people who get themselves into shit.
There’s been very few successes. Dysfunctional people are dysfunctional people. If you can cure the dysfunctional part they don’t need any help. And if you can’t, no help will ever help them. Because whatever you do for them doesn’t stay done. You’d have to run their lives for them, which they’d then resent & try even harder to fuck up.
It was the subject of conversation with someone very close & dear to me in the early… well actually rather late hours… of Saturday morning. I am most definitely not going to be around for ever. And she’s half my age. So I want to ensure she has a future. She’s asked I buy her a house in Brasil. Entirely doable. But what she can’t understand is that assets are almost worthless liabilities. The only value they have is their day to day utility value. So a house in Brasil is worth what it costs to rent a house in Brasil. Hardly anything by our standards. But you still have to pay taxes, maintenance costs, energy & water etc etc etc. It’s the income stream to do that I have to solve. She’s not very good at it. Why I know her.
I’ve got the same problem as my ex’s late father had with both his wife & inevitably in due course her. Very wealthy man Pierre, tax resident in Monaco but their main talents were buying shoes. So he took the obvious post mortem precautions.
“not make direct transfers to avoid benefits being stopped”
If you’ve no recourse to public funds, which applies to i think 1/3rd of adult rough sleepers, a cash transfer isn’t going to risk stopping your benefits which you don’t have.
“pay for items such as . . . outstanding debts”
The biggest single creditors are national and local government, so government will be giving money to government.
Oooh, you’re evil for thinking like this, what would you do? asks KCL lefty. I’d give them a copy of the keys to your house
You don’t live in Ely do you Julia? Are you sure it’s a council house?
Oh Tube. Can’t be. He doesn’t wear a kimono a carry a baseball bat?
If they’re NRPF, then presumably an immigrant, legal or otherwise. I wouldn’t object to taxpayers’ money being spent buying them one-way tickets to destinations of their choice. Doesn’t have to be “home”, just “away”.
buying them one-way tickets to destinations of their choice.
Why does firing them out of cannons from the cliffs above Dover seem such such a preferable idea?
“The do-gooders thus suggest that more be given to the birds. To pay for housing, food etc.”
@Bogan Boy: then the fellas would bash the birds until they handed over the money. A pitiful sight, yer abos, and not pillars of middle class civility.
One wonders if the real purpose of scheme to help the homeless is in fact to give well paid jobs to middle class do-gooder types.
If they’re NRPF, then presumably an immigrant, legal or otherwise. I wouldn’t object to taxpayers’ money being spent buying them one-way tickets to destinations of their choice. Doesn’t have to be “home”, just “away”.
Some years ago I was approached by one of those sorts of tale-spinners. “I’m on parole, I’ve lost me train ticket, I need to get back to Nottingham”.
Oh, you’re lucky! I’m a city councillor, we’ll just go down to the police station and we can get you a travel warrent… hello… hello…. hey, come back…. I know people!….
‘then the fellas would bash the birds until they handed over the money. ‘
All too true, dearieme!!
I predict that giving money to tramps will be considered a roaring success. That is in the design of this sociological experiment.
I’m a cynic, I know.
We have a winner! Take a bow, Jim!
Government gives money to NGO to solve homelessness crisis.
NGO hires people. “Here’s 300 quid in cash. Go out and find some winos to give the money to.”
What could possibly go wrong?
“Dysfunctional people are dysfunctional people. If you can cure the dysfunctional part they don’t need any help. And if you can’t, no help will ever help them. Because whatever you do for them doesn’t stay done.”
I know someone like this, a relative. In his sixties now, always talking the talk about how he’s getting his affairs sorted and is finally getting his shit together. It never happens.