Public housing is blamed for discouraging a tenant from engaging in productive activities and increasing one’s income, although it reinforces one’s housing stability. By examining the financial conditions, job satisfaction, determination for self-support among public housing tenants who participated in the job-creation project, this paper analyzes whether public housing exerts an influence on their will to gain self-support. The research compares and contrasts 100 public housing tenants and 109 non-public housing tenants in terms of their financial conditions, job satisfactions, and determinations for self-support, and suggests whether their different housing situations cause these differences.
The result shows that public housing tenants participated in the job-creation project for a longer period than non-public housing tenants. As they stayed longer in the project, public housing tenants acquired skills needed for self-support, and improved interpersonal skills, raised saving, and formed a tendency to save more. The increased saving is partially due to the cheaper housing rent for public housing tenants; they are advantaged to accumulate more wealth while engaging in the same job-creation project with non-public housing tenants .Even though public housing reduces one’s necessity to engage in productive activities, it does not mean that those who have abilities to work remain at public housing.