Removing housing benefit will make it harder for young people to start work
The abolition of housing benefit for 18-21 year-olds on Jobseekers Allowance, announced today, has dismayed homelessness charities. Jon Sparkes, the chief executive of Crisis, called it a ‘disaster for thousands of young people’, adding that:
“For many young people, living with their parents simply isn’t an option. They may be escaping violent or abusive backgrounds; or there may be no room for them in the family home. Housing benefit can be all that stands between them and homelessness.
“It can mean keeping a roof over their heads whilst they look for work or get their lives back on track. Far from helping them, taking this support away could make it even harder for them to find a job.”
This last point is the most important. Conservative welfare reforms do not help people get into work. This latest announcement is another example of a gross miscalculation by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) – both moral and logical – which says, take away everything and people will have no choice but to work.
The problem is, if you’re left with nothing you often end up stuck there. For example, benefit claimants who are sanctioned – leaving them without enough money to feed themselves – have reported their frustration at not being able to afford to travel to job interviews. Young people without a stable home will find it much more difficult to search and apply for jobs; at best they will be constantly changing location, at worst they will be sleeping rough. Neither situation is conducive to motivation and focus.
The IFS have said the cut will affect about 20,000 young adults – a big number but not enough that it will make any really substantial saving. They calculated that the move will save only about £0.1billion, and said the government may as well abolish the benefit for all under-25s if they want to see any real gains.
The announcement of the cut in the Queen’s Speech today coincided with the release of an OECD report on youth unemployment which should make the new government very uncomfortable. The OECD Skills Outlook 2015 warned that governments across OECD countries need to do more to give young people a good start to their working lives and help them find work; tackling youth unemployment, said secretary-general Angel Gurría, is ‘not only a moral imperative, but also an economic necessity’.
The latest ONS estimates found that there were 943,000 young people (aged from 16 to 24) in the UK who were Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET). The issues associated with young people who find themselves in the NEET category are include low educational attainment, gang membership, early criminalisation, drug culture and dependency, care needs, teenage pregnancy, and in many cases an overlap of several of these factors.
Adding the threat of homelessness to this list of concerns is not only senseless, it is terribly cruel.
Among the recommendations of the OECD report is that:
“Public employment services, social welfare institutions and education and training systems should offer some form of second-chance education or training.
“In return for receiving social benefits, young people could be required to register with social welfare or public employment services, and participate in further education and training.”
Instead, the government have launched the new parliament with a cut which embodies their welfare ideology – tough love without the love, punitive, counterproductive and not inclined to second chances. They say they will continue to protect those with nowhere else to go, but the problem is that it is often not evident who this is until it is too late, until the most hopeless find themselves without a roof over their heads, off the radar and out of options.
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
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22 Responses to “Cruel new cut threatens vulnerable young people with homelessness”
Brumanuensis
In which JoeDM reveals that he doesn’t know that Housing Benefit is an in-work benefit and that a substantial proportion of claimants are either working, retired or unable to work due to ill health, in addition to those who are jobseekers.
Try again Joe.
Jacobsadder
Before the welfare state people endured intolerable hardship and often died, horribly from malnutrition and concomitant illnesses. Before the welfare state there was unemployment and starvation. Before the welfare state the world in which we lived was a completely different place than the one we inhabit now. So to praise a system that worked then hardly applies to the world in which we live now. Do you wish to see the return of child labour? Do you suggest they leave school at 14 and flock to the burger bars and the call centres in search of a job? Before that we shipped in slaves by the thousand, we stole them off their lands while stealing their lands – should we bring that back? Unfortunately there are those who desire changes such as this, and they are slowly introducing them – they are called Tories.
I take it you don’t in any way benefit from public services? You’ve obviously put enough money aside for that rainy day so you don’t need support if you suddenly find yourself unemployed? Even worse, a victim of a condition meaning work is no longer a viable option? If so, you are one of a very select few. If not, then be careful, as you could be labelled a ‘scrounger’ the minute you need that support. Either way, continue to preach from on high, sit in naive arrogant smugness and judge those less fortunate than yourself if that’s how you get your gratification. You must be brimming with self satisfied pride, much like the Bullingdon gods you so obviously worship.
Mike Stallard
None of the above is argument is it. It is actually ad hominem and that really does not work. None of you know me at all, do you. So you are just guessing.
The state is not the agency to hand taxpayers’ money down to teenagers who, incidentally, are now being touted as voters. Why? Because the Ministers and Officers really do not know the difference between welfare scroungers and lay-abouts like those on Jeremy Kyle, and people (like myself) who have to go onto the dole and then get off it after a very unfair dismissal involving spirited defence by my excellent Union Rep.
It used to be called the difference between the deserving and the undeserving poor.
If you do not admit that there are undeserving poor, then, frankly, you have absolutely no right to comment.
And, as I can tell you from bitter experience, taking the State’s hand-out is humiliating and it changes you too – into a beggar with not a shred of dignity.
althejazz
In other words, “Stuff you jack, I’m all right”
Seditive
People who left school at 14 generally went straight into jobs involving manual labour, which used to be in plentiful supply. The world’s changed since then.