Social housing is a collective form of property ownership. Lower-income households spend astounding percentages of their income on housing. All the money released through access to social housing is directly reinvested in the local economy. A welfare recipient who spends 80% of his income on housing and who enters low-income housing spends only 25% of his income on housing. The money thus freed up for that person is spent directly on essential goods, access to culture and so on. That freed up money will be spent locally.
This helps people and gives them more income to live instead of simply surviving. On another level, we must build and maintain social housing. In the communities, that enables people to have decent housing. This releases energy for doing other things.
When you have a serious housing problem, whether it's because you're paying too much, or you're living in poor quality housing or because you don't have any housing, you have to spend energy going around to food banks, and so on. When people's housing problems are solved, that frees up energy that they can use to do other things. In this way, they're given a chance to break out of the survival dynamic, to experience something else and, eventually, to return to the labour market and contribute to society in other ways.