King's College London

This is the first study conducted by the Cash Lab, a research group investigating whether giving people direct financial support – without conditions on how they spend it – can break the cycle of poverty and improve outcomes.

In this trial 99 care leavers across nine English local authorities received a one-off, unconditional payment of £2,000, with outcomes tracked at six and twelve months and compared against a group of 200 similar care leavers who did not receive this payment.

Those who received the payment were more likely to report stable housing and less likely to have sofa-surfed than peers who did not receive the payment. Recipients also reported improvements in wellbeing, social connectedness, and reductions in unplanned hospital stays. Some positive effects diminished over the 12-month study period, suggesting a single payment of this size may not be sufficient to produce lasting change alone.

The study was conducted by researchers at the Policy Institute, King's College London, commissioned by the Centre for Homelessness Impact and funded by the UK Government's Evaluation Accelerator Fund. It is the first UK randomised controlled trial testing the impact of unconditional cash transfers on homelessness with a sample large enough to draw causal conclusions.