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.
Professor Michael Sanders, who runs KCL’s experimental government unit, said: “What we’re trying to understand is the boundary conditions for cash transfers. When does it work? For whom does it work? What are the amounts you need to give people in order to make it work?”
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Hoo boy there’s gonna be a lot of angry “self made” boomers and temporarily embarrassed millionaires
This helps, and is great, but as someone who was homeless for a while because of disability, the cash will give me 3 months of better food, i’ll still be homeless at the end of them. Paying disability benefits without having a 3 year waiting period is the only way to fix disability related homelessness.
the cash will give me 3 months of better food, i’ll still be homeless at the end of them
i think it is supposed to be more about teaching man to fish. so a free fishing pole instead of free fish for life.
i know nothing about disability homelessness, it is pretty likely the system is not going to fix everything, that is why it is an experiment.
Wow! This would be an example for the rest of the world. (If the fadcist wave will die)