
Crises of affordable housing in many countries are bringing a new appreciation of the importance of government-financed social housing for low and no-income citizens.
Where countries such as the United States, Canada, The United Kingdom and Australia have allowed much of their social housing stock to be sold to private owners or to deteriorate, often beyond repair, it has been increasingly important to adequately maintain that which remains.
Ideal visions of social housing involve a progression of unemployed tenants into jobs. Higher salaries mean greater contributions to housing maintenance. In the fullness of time tenants who had found their financial feet move on to free market housing rental or purchase, leaving room for new tenants.
A percentage of social housing would always be available for those without the possibility of employment such as those on disability incomes, senior citizens who could no longer work and had no pensions, the chronically ill, and single parents forced to choose between child care and work. But particularly as social housing stock shrinks, housing authorities are becoming even more invested in the success of career attempts by those tenants who might, with higher salaries, be able to rent in the free market.
One recent endorsement of education and training involves a social housing provider in Lincolnshire, UK, which has gone so far as to acquire a training company with which it has been long associated. Read more in insider: Training Company Acquired By Social Housing Provider
Thinking along the same lines, a housing authority in the US is invested in the educational success of its tenants, and one in particular. Read more in centralmaine.com:1 True grit – from public housing to a scholarship that bears her name