Housing assistance and non-shelter outcomes

Commonwealth and State Governments spend very large amounts of money on housing assistance. They provide housing of particular types in particular locations, with specific affordability outcomes. The housing or shelter impacts of these interventions are reasonably well understood. However, given the capacity of housing to affect many other elements of people’s lives, an important question is the extent to which housing assistance impacts on a range of what have become known as non-shelter outcomes. For the purposes of this study, a framework was developed in which non-shelter outcomes could be examined. The framework classified non-shelter outcomes by “source of impact” — namely the dwelling, neighbours, area, community, tenure and amount of disposable income spent by the household on housing. Mechanisms for the generation of non-shelter outcomes were described for employment, health, education and crime. The study’s methods of investigation were a qualitative survey and formal survey instrument. This formal instrument was administered just after households received very significant levels of housing assistance (they moved into public housing (T1)) and again about six months later (T2). It was originally intended to undertake the main survey in Sydney and Brisbane. However, the Sydney survey exercise was hampered by a difficulty in recruiting respondents.