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The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) published its detailed proposals for a basic income in 2015.
The proposals are based on the Citizen’s Income Trust ‘pure Basic-Income’ model. Disability support and housing costs are not included in the scheme as they are not in the Citizen’s Income Trust’s scheme.
Housing and council tax benefits (and, for the record, disability payments) are an important source of support to those at the bottom of the income distribution.
An option which the RSA proposes for further exploration is the introduction of a ‘Basic Rental Income’. The Basic Rental Income would not be income-contingent and therefore does not have the same disincentive or perverse incentive (eg family break-up) effects as housing benefit and council tax credit. A Basic Rental Income based upon local market conditions would be granted to every individual who rented rather than owned a property. Local authorities would retain their statutory duty to house the homeless and should be given freedom to borrow and invest in new low-cost housing.
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