Led by King’s College London, study will recruit 360 people in England and Wales to explore benefits of scheme

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?”

One of the first cash transfer schemes was in Mexico in 1997 and since then they have been used around the world. But most evidence is from low and middle-income countries, and there has been opposition from politicians and the public, who often believe people will spend the money unwisely. Last year researchers in Canada found that giving CA$7,500 (£4,285) to 50 homeless people in Vancouver was more effective than spending money housing them in shelters, and saved around CA$777 (£443) per person.

  • wewbullEnglish
    132·
    6 hours ago

    I don’t think it’s unfounded, but it depends on the situation of the person. If they are there through addiction any money will feed the addiction first. If the person doesn’t have that issue, then money can be the first step on the road back into society.

    Also, key point in the article. The scheme doesn’t give them cash. It pays for things on their behalf. They say it’s to avoid benefits being stopped, and I’m sure that’s true but I expect it’s also so they can control what it’s being spent on.

    • Soup@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      1 hour ago

      It pretty much always helps in the long run, though, and the argument is that a couple people might misuse the funds and so we shouldn’t run the program then I have some blunt force trauma I’d love to send your way(I hope that wasn’t your argument but since it doesn’t really add to the conversation in any other way I’m not sure what you were getting at).

      Besides, look at Rat Park to see why people even turn to drugs so often anyway. They’re bored and left without the resources to live fulfilling lives and they turn to the substances that take away their pain. Just pay them, and keep the shitty puritan morality out of it. They’re in a place that’s pretty much as low as one can get, I’m gunna give ‘em some breathing room to make mistakes.

      And if we’re so worried about people misusing government-given funds then I’ve got a long list of rich “proper” folk who’d I’d happily string up by their toenails and leave to hang in the hot sun if we’re trying to get all horny for punishment.

    • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      13·
      5 hours ago

      Money and shelter is always the first step.

      Kicking an addiction is hard. Kicking an addiction without your basic needs met, is even harder.

      People like to think that the homeless should solve the reasons for their homelessness first, and only then be helped. Because otherwise the help will just go to waste.

      In reality, it should happen the other way around. The help makes it more likely they’ll solve their problems at all, and hence actually leads to less homelessness overrall.

      • wewbullEnglish
        65·
        6 hours ago

        Agree with what everything you wrote, except somebody with an addiction doesn’t act rationally. If an addict has an opportunity to do something constructive with money, or can satisfy the addiction just one more time… The addiction wins.

        This is why addiction is so awful. It becomes the most important thing, and you will destroy anything else in your life to satisfy it. Then when everything is gone it still holds you down.

        I agree the order of things needs to be basic needs first, but an addict is unlikely to make that choice and needs help doing it. Not just the money to do it.

        • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          8·
          5 hours ago

          Obviusly.

          But you can’t ask an addict to start resisting their addiction, if the have nothing else.

          They need something to resist it for. If they don’t have that, their next high IS the most important thing to them.

          And this whole thing where we keep saying “the addiction will win every time” promotes a defeatist attidue towards helping these people that has lead to policies that are literally killing them.

          The addiction doesn’t win every time. If that were true there wouldn’t be any saving any addict ever.

          Addicts can and will turn anything and everything of value given to them into money, that can then buy them another high, but that CANNOT be used as an excuse to refuse to help them.

          Institutionlize, maybe, but that’s a healthcare problem, not a homeless problem. And that kind of help should be available to a person before they are ever put out of a home.