Abstract Income-related housing allowances are used by most advanced welfare states to ensure that their citizens have access to decent accommodation at a price within their means. Surprisingly, comparing outcomes when the subsidy is paid to the claimant or direct to the landlord has attracted little attention, despite differences existing between countries. This paper uses data collected as part of the evaluation of the Direct Payment Demonstration Projects (DPDPs) in Great Britain to test the impact on rent collection and arrears of paying Housing Benefit to tenants, as oppose to the landlord direct. The DPDPs aimed to provide learning in readiness for the introduction of Universal Credit, which sees six separate benefits consolidated into one monthly payment made to the claimant. Using quasi-experimental rental account analysis techniques, the direct payment was found to have a significant negative effect on both rent collection and arrears. However, evidence suggested that the longer term impact may be smaller as tenants become more ‘normalised’ to having responsibility for paying their rent. These findings make an important contribution to the major theoretical debate on the effectiveness of using welfare policy to promote ‘responsibilisation’, which has become the dominant discourse since the mid-late 1990's.

中文翻译：

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直接支付住房福利：房东承担什么费用？

摘要 最先进的福利国家使用与收入相关的住房补贴来确保其公民能够以力所能及的价格获得体面的住宿。令人惊讶的是，尽管国家之间存在差异，但比较补贴支付给索赔人或直接支付给房东的结果几乎没有引起人们的注意。本文使用作为英国直接支付示范项目 (DPDP) 评估的一部分收集的数据来测试对租金收取和向租户支付住房福利的拖欠的影响，与房东直接相反。DPDP 旨在为引入 Universal Credit 做好准备，它将六项单独的福利合并为每月向索赔人支付的款项。使用准实验租赁账户分析技术，发现直接付款对收取租金和拖欠租金都有显着的负面影响。然而，有证据表明，随着租户变得更加“正常化”以承担支付租金的责任，长期影响可能会更小。这些发现对关于利用福利政策促进“责任化”的有效性的主要理论辩论做出了重要贡献，自 1990 年代中后期以来，“责任化”已成为主流话语。