Real London Lives

  • 01 September 2016

Real London Lives was a longitudinal study examining the lives of London housing association tenants, which ran from 2013 to 2015. A co-production between the G15 and the University of York’s Centre for Housing Policy, it covered three facets of tenant’s lives:

  • • the impact of family dynamics on housing decisions, particularly in response to welfare reform (click here for the qualitative report)
  • experiences of employment and unemployment (click here for the qualitative report and here for a summary of survey findings)
  • household economics including tenants’ income, expenditure, debt and attitudes to money (click here for the qualitative report and here for a quantitative report on survey findings)

A final six-page summary report is also available here.

Dr Julie Rugg, who led the research on behalf of York’s Centre for Housing Policy, said:

“This is a hugely important study, because it shows that social housing isn’t an end point. For many people, it’s a beginning. We have had so many studies that talk about social housing as a ‘poverty trap’. This research has shown that the sector fosters aspiration: people want social housing because they see it as a pathway to financial independence.”