Why living through scarcity opens the door to bad actors

By Hannah Fearn, freelance journalist specialising in social affairs

The failure of successive governments to build enough new homes has resulted in a housing crisis and low economic growth. With supply so tight, it’s now only the most vulnerable people in society who qualify for low-cost housing.

Waiting lists are long and growing. Only those with very complex needs are allocated tenancies at social, rather than ‘affordable’, rent levels. Inevitably, over the same period that the state pulled out of funding housing, the cost of supporting tenants effectively and building sustainable communities has just kept on rising. The government might be plunging into a long campaign of spending and legislating to reverse poor development rates, but that pattern of increasing needs isn’t going away.

In September the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published its annual assessment of the ‘minimum income standard’. This figure is a complex calculation of the income that a person or a family needs to be able to be an active and engaged part of their community. It isn’t a measure of basic needs; the number always includes the type of discretionary spending that makes a life feel liveable and worthwhile – an occasional takeaway, a Netflix subscription, a visit to the zoo with your children, and being able to afford some decorations to put up at Christmas time.

Inflation has been rapid in the post-covid period. We can all feel it. Nevertheless, this year’s minimum income standard will shock you. It certainly shocked me.

A single person now requires a pre-tax income of £30,500 to achieve that basic standard of living. A couple who have two children aged three and seven require £74,000. The current UK minimum wage for an adult works out as an annual salary of around £25,400. Two people earning that are falling well short. The slack is picked up by universal credit, but benefits are being repressed and are only intended to help a family reach subsistence.

“Inflation has been rapid in the post-covid period. We can all feel it. Nevertheless, this year’s minimum income standard will shock you. It certainly shocked me”

The median average income for an adult in full-time work is £37,430. Two adults on that income are over the minimum income standard threshold – but not by much. And most families in social housing today will not fall into that category.

Destitution levels are rising in the UK, but just as importantly, so are the numbers of households living somewhere on the cusp of poverty. They may be just about scraping by on a package of low paid work and small benefit payments, with some free childcare or perhaps free school meals, but they don’t have the slack in their budgets to participate in their communities in the way they would choose. They are falling well short of today’s minimum income standard.

The government is still looking to reduce benefits, meaning that incomes of those on this threshold will shrink even further while costs continue to rise. While incomes are steadily rising again, they are still not keeping pace with daily costs.

These shifts have real consequences within communities. Living through scarcity turns people inwards; it can create emotions of frustration and hostility. It leads to a sense of personal powerlessness that can be easily manipulated by bad actors – whether that’s local doorstep loan sharks or the fascist agitators of the far right.

The people that housing associations now work with are living more complex and under-supported lives than at any time in the movement’s history, and they’re doing so while money for the public services they rely on is still shrinking even while the cash tap for development funding has been turned back on.

So, do celebrate the arrival of a new era of government support for social housing – but don’t make the mistake that it’s going to make your job any easier.