There are three round-up pieces over a few days, of news and data source items on welfare related issues. They are to bridge the gap of the last few months before these news stops become a regular post.

Keep your fingers hovering over the comment form below as we would really like to find out how you use the data links and what areas you want included.

• Homeless? Here, have a tent… Guardian. A council which refused emergency housing support to a homeless 62-year old pensioner instead offered to buy her a tent.
• The bedroom tax has made huge problems even worse. The Guardian. The government’s housing benefit changes are a mess, ramping up arrears and emptying out streets. But what would Labour do differently?
• We need fresh thinking on social security. The new economics foundation. But there is another choice on offer from David Cameron. I will tell you that there is a minority who don’t work but should.
• National Register on social housing (NROSH). data.gov.uk. NROSH aimed to be a database of all social housing properties in England, with a range of details captured on each property.
• Zero hours contracts fuel life of ‘permanent uncertainty’ and could perpetuate underemployment. Huffington Post. Workers employed on zero hours contracts are paid an average of £6 an hour less than those with set hours, according to a new study.
• Academics’ bin diving ’caused by zero hours contracts’ TES. Academics on zero-hours contracts have been driven to go “bin diving” for food.
• Food poverty. I was brought up not to steal but that’s how bad it’s got. Guardian. Welfare cuts, the government passionately believes, will trigger “dynamic and behavioural changes” in those individuals who have to bear them. The implication is that these behavioural changes will be entirely positive: but what if impoverishment, intended to make “work pay,” has the opposite effect?
• Night shelter crisis: ‘Find your own money, ‘ say ministers. Guardian. The Coalition is refusing to intervene in the growing night shelter crisis – even though it threatens to derail the government’s flagship homelessness strategy.
• And two from data.gov.uk Work programme official statistics. Statistics to show the number of referrals, attachments, job outcomes & sustainment payments to the Work Programme.
• Young people in the labour market. data.gov.uk. This analysis looks at the economic activity of young people aged 16 to 24 in the UK.

Useful links for May: child poverty; risk of night shelter closure; food banks struggle to cope.