About

Working Future is an innovative project targeting homeless households in temporary accommodation. The project combines measures to tackle the benefits trap created by high rents, with targeted assistance to overcome other barriers to employment.

Half of London’s 62,000 homeless households placed temporarily by London Boroughs are in temporary accommodation leased from the private sector (referred to as PSL). While PSL accommodation can offer quality, self-contained homes for homeless people, the high rent levels they command (on average £300 per week) and the length of time households remain in them (which averages two and a half years but can often be longer) compounds the social exclusion and benefit dependency for households in which worklessness predominates.

Working Future seeks to tackle this through a pilot project in the east London boroughs of Waltham Forest, Redbridge and Newham.