Housing associations more effective than government in supporting unemployed in deprived areas

University of East Anglia

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New research reveals that ‘third-sector’ services, such as those run by housing associations, are far more effective than government work programmes at helping the long-term unemployed in deprived areas.

The study, led by the University of East Anglia (UEA), investigated the impact of alternative support services and recommends key strategies for helping individuals move closer to employment and improve their overall wellbeing, using a person-centred, strength-based, and long-term approach.

Published in the Journal of European Social Policy, it highlights three crucial ingredients for success:

• Focusing on strengths: rather than dwelling on limitations, successful programmes start with the skills, aspirations, and strengths of the individuals, building on their capabilities to help them thrive.
• Long-term commitment: the report underscores the importance of consistent, ongoing support - helping individuals navigate the transition from long-term unemployment to stable employment, with reliable partners invested in their success.
• Locally embedded services: by investing in services that are rooted within deprived communities, organisations can create valuable networks with other support services, local businesses, and potential employers, fostering opportunities for employment in the area.

Despite the findings suggesting that government programmes could be improved by adopting elements of these alternative approaches, the researchers say they are ill-equipped to deliver the personal, sustained, and community-centred support needed to help the hardest-to-reach individuals in deprived areas.

The research calls for public investment to shift towards third-sector organisations, such as housing associations and social enterprises, that have a proven track record of offering services anchored in the realities of long-term unemployment. These organisations are uniquely positioned to forge long-term relationships with vulnerable individuals and provide a holistic, adaptable support system.

“Our research shows that tackling long-term unemployment in deprived areas is not about delivering ‘a’ job that acts as turning point for the long-term unemployed,” said the report’s lead author Professor Zografia Bika, from UEA’s Norwich Business School. “Instead, it is about forging a long-term relationship that builds on where people are now, their realities and their aspirations.

“This means re-orientating services towards optimising the ‘distance travelled’ by vulnerable people on their pathways from unemployment towards work, rather than maximising the number of job-offers or start-ups they deliver.”

This non-sanction-based approach requires greater investment and resources than traditional government work-first programmes, but the findings suggest it offers a far more sustainable solution and has a much greater chance of effectively helping.

The most well-suited organisations will combine an existing local presence, strong relationships with the long-term unemployed, and commitment to people-centred services characterised by learning and adaptability.

This could include offering more role modelling, mentoring, and follow-up as well as helping to overcome complex barriers, such as childcare, physical and/or mental health problems, addiction, and homelessness.

Housing associations, for example, are involved in brokering local links and partnerships with potential employers, regeneration opportunities, accredited training providers, colleges, and employment agencies and building on existing structures or resources to redirect them to the target group and deprived areas.

The study drew on interviews with those who deliver and use these services, which were conducted as part of a five-year (2018-2023) EU-funded project led by housing associations developing micro enterprise and employment support services in deprived neighbourhoods in Northwest-France and Southeast-England.

Through this project, by 2022 more than 4,500 adults who were ‘furthest from the market’ - either economically inactive or out-of-work, in insecure jobs, at risk of redundancy, or with enterprises that have failed - completed at least 12 hours of training. Of the 6,259 clients who began training, 16% started a business, 18% had a new job, and 7% had enrolled in further education.  

The English housing associations were particularly effective at working with retailers or employers where new stores and factories - and so jobs - opened locally. In the most successful cases, employers guaranteed interviews for specified numbers of local clients who completed training for these positions: the housing associations selected the client, coached them, and supported required training, such as security/food hygiene certificates.

Prof Bika added: “Alternative approaches to moving people closer to work value all that can happen in the employment journey, including setbacks and near misses that are seen as opportunities for learning and building resilience.”

‘Theorising ‘best practice’ for supporting those furthest from the market into work or self-employment in France and England’, Zografia Bika, Catherine Locke, Caterina M Orlandi and Benjamin Valcke, is published in the Journal of European Social Policy on October 10.

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Journal

Journal of European Social Policy

DOI

10.1177/09589287251384936 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Theorising ‘best practice’ for supporting those furthest from the market into work or self-employment in France and England

Article Publication Date

10-Oct-2025

 

Research examines the good, bad and ugly of true crime media

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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True crime is a lucrative genre, topping ratings and spawning online communities. But despite its popularity — and its ability to highlight cases that need attention — the production of true crime has a dark side, often adding to the trauma experienced by victims’ loved ones.

University of Nebraska–Lincoln scholar Kelli Boling published new research highlighting the impacts of true crime media on the family and friends of crime victims. Through in-depth interviews with 20 co-victims — all of whom experienced their loved ones’ stories told through true crime media — Boling and co-author Danielle Slakoff of California State University, Sacramento, found that co-victims often have to wrestle with a dichotomy between feeling an immense loss of privacy amid grief and wanting the media’s help to keep a criminal case in the public eye in the pursuit of justice.

“There’s a horrible intrusiveness that's never going to go away and often, it’s going to be covered for the rest of their lives,” Boling said. “On the flip side, being available to media helps them find leads in certain cases, especially in missing person cases. It keeps people talking about the cases and sometimes helps them change the narrative and correct inaccuracies.”

The qualitative research, published as two articles in Mass Communication and Society and Crime Media Culture, found five main themes of concern that co-victims had about their experience with true crime media: inaccuracies; sensationalism of tragedy; loss of privacy; uncomfortable interactions with true crime consumers, including trolls; and lack of control in how the stories are produced or edited, resulting in further harm.

The co-victims also highlighted some positives of true crime media, including drawing public attention to a case; education about the criminal justice system; and the resulting pressure on criminal justice officials to solve a case and pursue justice for the victims.

“The missing person cases and the cold cases tend to be more dependent on media long term, so they maintain a more positive overall impression of the media, because they are so dependent on keeping their loved one's name out there,” Boling said.  

One of the most surprising findings for Boling was co-victims’ interactions with the public. They described dealing with strangers “trauma dumping” on them, trolling behaviors and amateur sleuths harassing them online and in person for information, among other infringements.

“A lot of what we see here sounds like parasocial relationships, but it’s different, because you've got people who want to help solve the case,” Boling said. “They want to do their part, but they don't necessarily see themselves as being friends with the co-victim. What they really want is justice. They do feel like they've got some innate ability to solve the case that nobody else has, which isn’t true.”

This new research adds to a growing body of literature examining the ethics of the true crime genre. Boling and Slakoff described the current true crime media landscape as largely controlled by algorithms and consumed by people who aren’t always able to discern the true crime media that is produced ethically from the sensationalized or exploitative.

“It's not a crack of a difference, it's the Grand Canyon of a difference,” Boling said. “And the average consumer doesn't know that one broadcast, one podcast or one documentary is produced ethically and one isn't. You might watch a documentary that’s ethically produced, and then the algorithm suggests one that’s sensationalized or completely inaccurate.”

Similarly, the co-victims interviewed didn’t distinguish between journalists, professional production crews or armchair detectives invading their privacy — they felt they were all harmful. While co-victims did see some benefits to true crime media, they felt there should be standards and possibly laws in place to protect them.

“They didn't distinguish between who was flying the helicopter that was over their house or trying to take photos of their backyard. Everything was media to them,” Boling said. “They didn't distinguish if this is a local news outlet or some independent production. In their mind, everybody should be held to the same standards. Nobody should be allowed to do this.”

Boling and Slakoff are writing a forthcoming article based on the interviews about how the production of true crime can be done more ethically, without causing further harm to the co-victims.

“I went into this research as a media scholar, and my thought was that the only way to properly tell a story is by a trained journalist, who is following journalistic ethics, but we found that co-victims said, ‘no, the only way to tell these stories is to have the co-victims tell the story,’” Boling said. “They were very clear that only another co-victim would have the empathy and respect to tell a story that anybody outside that lived experience could not do it justice.

“Ethical true crime has to be victim and co-victim centered.”

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Journal

Crime Media Culture An International Journal

DOI

10.1177/17416590251371618 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

“What an invasion, an immense invasion”: Examining the adverse effects of true crime media on co-victims

 

Research shows National Living Wage has reduced labor mobility across firms, but at what cost?

Bayes Business School research explores effects of rising wage floors across UK organizations

City St George’s, University of London

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New research led by Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) has revealed the introduction of the National Living Wage (NLW) in the UK in April 2016 significantly decreased labour mobility across firms by minimum wage workers.

While it has delivered a pay boost for many low-paid workers, the rising wage floor could be affecting the fluidity of the job market if it is reducing workers’ incentives to search for new jobs and move between firms.

The National Living Wage was introduced by the UK Government to replace the National Minimum Wage for workers aged 25 and over, initially raising the threshold hourly rate by 50 pence to £7.20. The rise represented the largest single increase in the minimum wage since it was introduced in 1999.

The study, led by John Forth, Professor in Human Resources Management at Bayes, is the first UK evaluation of the impact of a rising wage floor on the rate at which minimum-wage employees move jobs. It examined the effects of introducing NLW and how it affected the likelihood of minimum-wage employees moving between different organisations.

Key findings suggest:

• The introduction of the National Living Wage has decreased between-firm movements of the lowest-paid workers by between two and three percentage points compared to those earning just above the threshold.
• The study found negative effects on job mobility among workers earning up to 25 pence per hour above the National Living Wage, meaning this comparative reduction in job mobility among the lowest paid extended beyond those paid at the threshold.
• There was no significant difference in mobility between the lowest-paid workers and others within the same firm, suggesting that some firms have kept pay structures intact, and that the main reduction in job mobility has been among low-paid workers whose firms offer limited progression opportunities.

The research was carried out using data from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), and follows the Low Pay Commission’s definitions of gross hourly earnings including basic pay, bonuses or incentives, but excluding overtime.

Focusing on workers above the age of 25 employed in consecutive years, the researchers used two-year data blocks to estimate job mobility, while observing corresponding wage floor movements before and after the introduction of National Living Wage.

Results suggested workers previously earning below the new minimum rate of pay saw their remuneration sharpy rise, while rising wage floors compressed the lowest wages between firms – making potentially risky job switches less attractive.

The study was carried out with experts from the University of Stirling, University College London, and the University of the West of England.

Professor Forth said:

“The National Living Wage uprated wages for many low-paid workers in the UK labour market. Attention has naturally focused on the effects of National Living Wage on employment rates, but our study is the first to look at how it effects job mobility among the UK’s lowest-paid workers.

“Our findings indicate good news for workers in the short-run, but with potentially damaging long-term effects for the economy.

“Higher wages generally increase employee happiness. They also reduce the need for workers to take risks, by moving to jobs where the non-wage aspects are hard to evaluate before you start work. In the long run, however, lower mobility could mean firms struggling to fill new low-pay vacancies if the rising wage discourages workers to search for new opportunities.

“We urge the Low Pay Commission to continue to monitor the impact of minimum wages on job mobility as the wage floor increases, and as the government considers the extension of the NLW to cover workers aged between 18 and 21.”

‘The impact of a rising wage floor on labour mobility across firms’, Professor John Forth, Dr Carl Singleton, Professor Alex Bryson, Professor Felix Ritchie, Lucy Stokes and Dr Damien Whittard is published in the British Journal of Industrial Relations.

The research forms part of the Wage and Employment Dynamics project (www.wagedynamics.com) and was funded by ADR UK (Administrative Data Research UK) and the Economic and Social Research Council.

Notes to Editors

1. The sample estimation size comprised more than 3,000 observations in the treated group and 6,000 observations in the control group, across 800 firms per year, covering the period 2011/12 to 2018/19. The total number of data points is approximately 116,000.

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Journal

British Journal of Industrial Relations

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

The impact of a rising wage floor on labour mobility across firms

Article Publication Date

21-Jul-2025

Argentina's Congress curbs Milei’s decree powers in major blow to libertarian leader

Argentina’s Congress voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to curb President Javier Milei’s power to rule by decree, marking another setback for the right-wing libertarian. Milei, whose party holds a minority in parliament, has issued more than 70 decrees since taking office in December 2023 to advance his austerity program.


Issued on: 09/10/2025 
By: FRANCE 24

Argentina's Congress on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to restrict President Javier Milei's ability to govern by decree -- the latest in a string of setbacks for the right-wing leader.

Milei, whose party is in a minority in parliament, has issued more than 70 decrees since taking office in December 2023 to push through his austerity agenda.

The lower house Chamber of Deputies approved an amendment to a bill regulating presidential decrees by 140 votes in favor to 80 against and 17 abstentions.

The bill, which had already been approved by the Senate, stipulates that a decree can be overturned by a single house of parliament.

Previously, a majority of both houses of parliament was required to reject a presidential order.

Argentina's President Javier Milei wears his spectacles as he stands at the podium to address the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 24, 2025. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton REUTERS - Shannon Stapleton
01:45

The bill now goes back to the Senate, where it is expected to be approved.

The vote deals a new blow to 54-year-old Milei, who is reeling from scandals within his party, a run on the peso that forced him to ask Washington for a financial rescue last month, and three earlier Congressional votes overturning some of his spending vetoes.

Milei, who won the presidency by campaigning as an outsider, has denounced Congress as a "nest of rats" and its members as a "political caste."

On Monday, he tried to revive the rockstar persona that helped him get elected by headlining a concert to mark the release of his latest book touting what he claims as his economic "miracle."

But he is looking increasingly vulnerable as he faces midterm elections on October 26, in which half of the Chamber of Deputies and one-third of the Senate will be elected.

Last month, his La Libertad Avanza party was trounced by the center-left in Buenos Aires provincial polls seen as a bellwether of his support.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

UN to slash global peacekeeping force by 25% amid US funding strains

The United Nations will cut a quarter of its global peacekeeping force in coming months due to US funding reductions, a senior UN official said Wednesday. Thousands of troops will leave missions worldwide as Washington aligns its contributions with President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy, the official added.

Issued on: 09/10/2025 - 
By: FRANCE 24

A United Nations flag flies from an armoured vehicle of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in southern Lebanon near the border with northern Israel on August 27, 2025. © Anwar Amro, AFP

The United Nations will begin slashing its peacekeeping force and operations, forcing thousands of soldiers in the next several months to evacuate far-flung global hotspots as a result of the latest US funding cuts to the world body, a senior UN official said.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting, briefed reporters Wednesday on the 25% reduction in peacekeepers worldwide as the United States, the largest UN donor, makes changes to align with President Donald Trump's “America First” vision.

Roughly 13,000 to 14,000 military and police personnel out of more than 50,000 peacekeepers deployed across nine global missions will be sent back to their home countries. The UN support office in Somalia will also be affected. The UN plans to reduce the peacekeeping force’s budget by approximately 15% for this year.

The countries where the UN has peacekeeping missions include Congo, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Lebanon, Cyprus and Kosovo.

Each of the UN’s 193 member countries is legally obliged to pay its share toward peacekeeping. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has argued that with a budget “representing a tiny fraction of global military spending — around one half of one percent — UN peacekeeping remains one of the most effective and cost-effective tools to build international peace and security.”

The decision to institute a major overhaul of the peacekeeping force — known globally for their distinctive blue berets or helmets — followed a meeting Tuesday between Guterres and representatives from major donor countries, including Mike Waltz, the new US ambassador to the United Nations.

Waltz and other Trump administration officials have argued that the UN's budget and agencies are bloated and redundant, pledging not to make any further contributions until the State Department has assessed the effectiveness of every single UN agency or program. Upon entering his second term in January, Trump ordered a review of the UN and other multilateral institutions, which has already resulted in cutting US ties from the UN cultural agency UNESCO, the World Health Organization and the top UN human rights body, while reassessing its funding for others.

At the UN, more than 60 offices, agencies and operations are facing 20% job cuts, part of Guterres’ reform effort and reaction to already announced Trump funding cuts.

In a television interview last week, Waltz said the US is focused on getting “the UN back to basics of promoting peace, enforcing peace, preventing wars.”

He added, “We have to cut out all of this other nonsense.”

UN peacekeeping operations have grown dramatically. At the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, there were 11,000 UN peacekeepers. By 2014, there were 130,000 in 16 peacekeepingoperations. Today, around 52,000 men and women serve in 11 conflict areas in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

The US outlined that it would commit $680 million to nine of those peacekeeping efforts, a significant reduction from the $1 billion payment the US had made this time last year, the UN official said. That funding will be accessible for all active missions, especially those the US has taken special interest in, such as peacekeepers in Lebanon and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Contributions from the US and China make up half of the UN's peacekeeping budget. Another senior UN official, who also requested anonymity to discuss private talks, said China has indicated it will be paying its full contribution by the end of the year.

(FRANCE 24 with AP)

The Great Holocene Transformation – Book Review

"The Great Holocene Transformation: What Complexity Science Tells Us about the Evolution of Complex Societies," by Peter Turchin, critically evaluates rival theories about society's evolution using computational models and big data analytics. 

Credit: Beresta Books

October 9, 2025 

By Eurasia Review

Why do virtually all humans today live in large-scale societies organized as states? A new book by Peter Turchin, from the Complexity Science Hub (CSH), offers an answer based on analysis of data from more than 800 societies: warfare drove humanity’s transformation from small nomadic bands to the complex civilizations that dominate our world.

The Great Holocene Transformation (Beresta Books, September 2025) represents the culmination of an ambitious scientific project—the Seshat database—that collected and analyzed historical and archaeological data from more than 800 societies spanning 10,000 years of human history.

“This book was a long time in the making. The origins go back to 2011 when I, together with my colleagues, launched the Seshat Databank,” says Turchin, who leads CSH’s Social Complexity & Collapse group.

Turchin’s central finding is that competition between societies—primarily in the form of warfare—forced human groups to scale up and develop sophisticated institutions for cooperation over the last 10,000 years, known as the Holocene epoch.

“This process led both to oppression and inequality within societies, but also to the development of institutions and ideologies that promote prosociality and enhance welfare: in short, to the large-scale, complex societies that now dominate the globe,” explains Turchin.
A Scientific Approach to History

The book builds on findings published in leading scientific journals, including Science Advances and PNAS, using computational models and big data analytics to evaluate rival theories about societal evolution.

“We tested 17 competing hypotheses using the most comprehensive historical database ever assembled,” explains Turchin. “While agriculture played a role, the most powerful driver of social complexity was intergroup competition and warfare.”

AMERIKA

How The Affordable Rental Housing Crisis Is Hurting Hispanics – OpEd

 October 9, 2025  0 Comments

By Algernon Austin

Policies to provide affordable rental housing have been inadequate since the 1960s, and they have only gotten worse in recent years. Policy analysts consider households paying more than 30 percent of their income on housing to be cost-burdened.

In other words, these households need affordable housing but are not able to find it. In 2001, the Joint Center for Housing Studies reports, 40.6 percent of renters were cost-burdened (see Excel Data tables). Two decades later, in 2022, 49.6 percent of renters were cost-burdened. The need for affordable rental housing continues to grow. 

The Hispanic population, being disproportionately lower-income, has an even higher cost-burdened rate. In 2022, the Joint Center for Housing Studies reports, 53.8 percent of Hispanic renters were cost-burdened.

In some of the states with the largest Hispanic populations, the rates were even higher. In California, the state with the most Hispanics, 56.3 percent of Hispanic renters were cost-burdened (Figure). In Florida, the state with the third largest number of Hispanics, 60.4 percent of Hispanic renters were cost-burdened.

The lack of affordable housing causes additional housing problems for the Hispanic population. Ten percent of Hispanic renter households live in substandard housing. This housing has significant maintenance needs including problems with hot and cold running water, heat, and electricity. Hispanic people are alsooverrepresented in the unhoused population.

Our current strategy for creating affordable rental housing relies primarily on the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). LIHTC was designed primarily to meet the needs of wealthy investors, not the need for affordable housing. Because of this design priority, “LIHTC does not necessarily protect a renter from cost burdens,” and “LIHTC units often require additional subsidies to make this housing affordable.” Policymakers need to make significant investments in affordable rental housing rather than constantly finding new ways to help make the rich richer as they did in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

• This article was published by CEPR

Algernon Austin

Algernon Austin is the Director for Race and Economic Justice at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Algernon Austin has conducted research and writing on issues of race and racial inequality for over 20 years. His primary focus has been on the intersection of race and the economy. Austin was the first Director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy where he focused on the labor market condition of America’s workers of color. He has also done work on racial wealth inequality for the Center for Global Policy Solutions and for the Dēmos think tank. At the Thurgood Marshall Institute, the think tank of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., he worked on issues related to race, the economy, and civil rights.