Housing Tenants

Abstract: This paper utilises public housing administrative records from Western Australia to examine the impacts of public housing institutional arrangements on employment outcomes. Using a quasi-experimental approach, we explore welfare locks, housing stability and the work incentive effects of income-related rents in relation to public housing. We find that welfare locks while prospective tenants are on wait turn lists are large, and this is particularly evident among males. Individuals experience housing stability once they enter public housing and we find that this has a positive impact on employment outcomes. The impact is once again larger for males than females. On the other hand, we cannot detect generally significant effects from rebated rents on employment status. 21. Introduction1 The existing public housing literature offers multiple hypotheses on the effects of public housing on employment. The welfare lock hypothesis states that the requirement to maintain income below the public housing income eligibility limit may ‘lock ’ applicants in an unwaged state while on the wait list in order to maintain eligibility (Yelowitz, 2001). Public housin