\n<\/p>\n
C<\/span>onsider being a young homeless person on benefits today. Those aged 16-24 who can\u2019t live at home often\u00a0end up in supported housing. This could be a shared flat or a hostel, where specialist staff are on hand to help. But such young people frequently have\u00a0to cover service charges and bills \u2013 at an age when\u00a0they\u00a0should be building a future, not worrying about basic costs.<\/p>\n It\u2019s good that the state steps in to support vulnerable\u00a0young people. But wrong that it can undermine that help in practice. For the last eight years, campaigners have warned that young people in supported housing are penalised more harshly for earning than their non-homeless counterparts \u2013 and it\u2019s a UK-wide problem. For every \u00a31 these youngsters earn over their small earnings allowance, their housing benefit is reduced by 65p, compared with 55p for those in the private rental sector. Perversely, the flaw crept in during reforms meant to guarantee people on benefits were always better off in work.<\/p>\n Penalising young homeless people who want to work more is clearly counterintuitive. Anecdotally, those in the housing sector say it causes plenty of young people to forego meaningful work. You can see why: someone working 10 hours could lose more than \u00a3100 a month for picking up an 11th hour of work. That can narrow their options, as they find themselves having to be prescriptive about their hours, competing with peers who can be more flexible. In the longer run, it can reduce their prospects. In some cases, staff find themselves in the unenviable position of dissuading young people from taking a job lest they put their housing in jeopardy.<\/p>\n For a government that wants to \u201cmake work pay\u201d, this can\u2019t be right. The chancellor, Rachel\u00a0Reeves, has a chance to fix the problem in the budget. Young people have been the worst affected by rising\u00a0unemployment, and while Ms Reeves has made the right moves \u2013 promising paid work for young people on universal credit who haven\u2019t found education or employment after 18 months \u2013 those plans remain sketchy. It surely makes sense for Ms\u00a0Reeves to ensure that incentives to work apply equally to all young people.<\/p>\n A new campaign, fronted by 150 youth and homeless organisations, warns of a financial \u201ccliff edge\u201d that makes rent unaffordable and increases the risk of arrears. Charities say the earnings allowance should rise from a token \u00a35 to about \u00a357, and the housing benefit taper should be brought down from 65% to 55% to match universal credit.<\/p>\n These are sensible, practical measures that would ensure that some of the country\u2019s poorest people get financial help. It would also signal that the government is invested in making the country fairer for them. The homeless charity Centrepoint says it\u2019s a win-win policy. The Treasury, it calculates, will gain \u00a35m a year as more young people move into work. Once wider outcomes \u2013 such as improved health and reduced crime \u2013 are considered, the net gain is \u00a313m annually.<\/p>\n There is a generational crisis bubbling under Britain\u2019s surface in which young people face rising\u00a0unemployment, insecure housing and falling real wages. Their futures, it feels, are being shaped less by opportunity and more by precarity. If ministers truly want to \u201cmake work pay\u201d for everyone, they\u2019ll have to explain why 30,000 young homeless people are the one group excluded from that promise. It\u2019s time to act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Consider being a young homeless person on benefits today. Those aged 16-24 who can\u2019t live at home often\u00a0end up in supported housing. This could be a shared flat or a hostel, where specialist staff are on hand to help. But such young people frequently have\u00a0to cover service charges and bills \u2013 at an age when\u00a0they\u00a0should<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[561,113,1516,2076,11102,1510,13547,2655,2656,10552,1511,801],"class_list":{"0":"post-34877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-benefit","9":"tag-budget","10":"tag-editorial","11":"tag-fix","12":"tag-flaw","13":"tag-guardian","14":"tag-persons","15":"tag-rachel","16":"tag-reeves","17":"tag-trap","18":"tag-view","19":"tag-young"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}