ABSTRACT
The family income supplement – a means tested benefit payable to low-income families with children – was another such device. That scheme was aimed at helping those whose incomes were low in relation to their family responsibilities; ‘but people with low incomes and high rents need more help than those with low incomes and low rents’. This was precisely the problem to be met by housing allowances. Historically, despite the references to ‘weapons against family poverty’, the housing allowance scheme was unequivocally designed to facilitate the injection of some rationality in the haphazard and arbitrary pattern of rents. More research and more publicity might raise the take-up figures further, as might compulsory registration of rents. Nevertheless, it does appear that inadequate take-up is an inherent shortcoming of the housing allowance scheme. The housing allowance scheme initially applied only to unfurnished tenancies, and the government strongly resisted attempts to extend it to the furnished sector.
