UBS is not universal for Housing and it creates a perverse incentive to qualify as “in need.”
Standing 2019 - research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London [Guy, 6 June 2019, “Why ‘Universal Basic Services’ is no alternative to Basic Income” https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/why-universal-basic-services-is-no-alternative-to-basic-income/ Acc 3/23/23 TA]
The next UBS on the advocates’ list is free basic housing. That would not be a ‘universal’ service either, since it would be ‘offered on a needs basis’. All the problems related to targeted provision of free food would apply here too. How would ‘need’ be determined without a means test? What would happen if people no longer ‘needed’ the basic housing – would they be evicted? Incentives to become ‘in need’ to qualify for free housing would be enormous, unless the ‘basic’ housing was so unattractive as to weed out all but the truly desperate, increasing their marginalisation in new ‘sink estates’. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in the latest advocacy of UBS, ‘universal’ free food and free housing are not mentioned at all, while free childcare and adult social care make an appearance instead. So, in this manifestation, two of the most basic of needs – food and shelter – are effectively regarded as not basic. And as free childcare and adult social care were not costed by the original report proposing universal basic services, £42 billion is likely to be a considerable underestimate. With the added services, UBS would surely be a good deal more expensive than its proponents claim.