31Author:Article Title Housing Assistance and Economic Participation: What Have We Learnt?

The rate of employment participation has been consistently lower among housing assistance recipients than non-housing assistance recipients over the past two decades. In the period 1982-2000 employment outcomes among public housing tenants has deteriorated, despite an improving employment outlook for the general working age population during most of the 1990s. In this paper, we report the findings from the first stage of a collaborative research venture that examines the impacts of housing assistance, that is public housing concessional rents and Commonwealth Rent Assistance, on economic participation outcomes. Research directions that will be followed in the remainder of the collaborative research venture are also outlined in this paper. The first stage of the collaborative research venture comprises four main components. Firstly, housing assistance recipients are profiled against appropriate benchmark groups in the Australian population. Secondly, the contribution of housing assistance programmes to poverty and unemployment traps are measured. Thirdly, data sources that will enable researchers to conduct analysis into the causal links between housing assistance and economic participation are examined. Fourthly, an inventory of housing policy initiatives that encourage economic participation is provided. We find that working age adults eligible for housing assistance generally confront deeper poverty and unemployment traps than other income support recipients. Among public housing tenants concessional rents make a significant contribution to the depth of both poverty and unemployment traps. We also find evidence of multiple barriers to economic participation faced by housing assistance recipients that include lack of access to computers and the Internet, inferior educationa