Introduction
Housing is now perceived everywhere as a commodity with an exchange value, rather than as a basic need with a use value allocated, as of right, outside the marketplace. The facts concerning the existence of housing markets and their critical role in the provision of housing are indisputable. Individual market transactions are also by their very nature relatively silent, and there is no a priori reason to believe that the housing market is always alive and well (Angel 2000). The housing market is a sensitive, complex, and largely unknowable entity, subject to fits and starts, unpredictable, merciless, unstable, and almost totally dependent on forces outside itself. Still, it is a valuable and irreplaceable social construct, one that needs to be handled with care; especially since it is the now the repository of vast personal wealth and this great wealth was largely in the hands of home-owning families. Fortunately, many of the housing policies which have ignored the market have been abandoned (Angel 2000).
Anyone interested in housing policy now has no choice but to confront the issue of housing market performance. A new vision and an effective voice for housing require dismantling the public institutions myopically engaged in the construction and management of public housing. New knowledge-rich government institutions must come into being, agencies that accumulate information about the workings of the housing sector as a key economic sector, monitor the pulse of the sector, understand the effects of the housing policy environment on the sector’s performance, and implement minimal corrective mechanisms to support it in the attainment of realistic social objectives (Angel 2000).There is no alternative to articulating market-sensitive housing policies that can better gauge, limit, or support housing activity, and campaigning for their acceptance. Individual actors and institutions in the housing arena be they political parties, government agencies, research institutions, international organizations, non government agencies, professional associations, nonprofit organizations, community groups, builders, financial institutions, landowners, land and housing developers, squatter movements, and dwellers themselves have now attained different degrees of understanding of how to formulate such market-sensitive policies and how to marshal their campaigns (Balchin 1996).
The social policy on social care is different from the policy on housing. The social policy on housing concentrates on affordable housing policy, supporting people framework and community care strategy. The housing policy concentrates on making sure that people will have housing facilities that is dependable and affordable. It intends to make sure that there will be fairness and equality in public housing communities. Housing policy changes depending on the situation in a certain environment. It changes depending on the focus of a government and what priorities it wants to achieve first. The housing policy can affect the service given by a country to its citizen. The paper will discuss about the government policy on the housing service and the experiences of a person on it. The paper will discuss about the housing policies of the government and Amy Wood’s experience on the policy
The government’s social policy
A. Affordable housing policy
The key players in housing include landowners, the construction industry, banks, building societies, the financial markets and homeowners, as well as a range of public and other agencies. While none of these has had a consistent influence on housing policy, there have been many examples of such interests influencing the direction of change. Housing policy will generally be implemented through the imposition or alteration of legally enforceable rules and regulations, so it is important to understand how the law affects whether a policy will be successful. Decent housing was recognized as essential to good health more than a century ago, and the concern about ill-health led to the development of housing policy (Conway 2000). As slum clearance and new build programs brought significant housing improvements, and the focus of health services shifted away from environmental effects towards a medical approach, housing and health policies gradually separated. However, there is now a renewed interest from both sides in the links between housing and health. Poor housing conditions such as damp, mould, condensation and cold persist and can cause poor health (Conway 2000).
Changes in housing policy were part of a new approach to public services in general, with the state becoming a purchaser rather than a provider, and competition between independent agencies to provide services under a contract. The complexity of housing issues also inhibits radical revision. Housing reflects and affects the economic and social framework in which it is located. Housing is influenced by demographic, economic, fiscal and social trends, while housing policy changes have their own impact on all of these aspects. Programs designed to deal with one issue often have unintended. The long-term political consensus on housing policy quickly evaporated in the early 1980s, for example, under a government prepared to question long-standing assumptions and goals (Conway 2000).Looking into the future is a hazardous exercise, in danger of being rapidly over-taken by events, but any wide-ranging analysis would be incomplete without an attempt to pull out some of the significant threads for the future. Housing debates are beginning to focus on several long-term questions which are predicted to challenge housing policy well into the twenty-first century (Hays 2001).
The government has a long tradition of affordable social rented housing. It has its own home ownership options wherein people can share the house’s ownership with the landlord. After some time the government introduced a scheme wherein the tenants have the right to buy the property with a discount of 60%. Many housing facilities that were under the local government were transferred to new housing associations. These housing associations have rents that are higher than the council housing. This causes housing issues in the country. The government formed agencies that try to find solutions for the issues in the price of housing and the issues of what organization will have the responsibility for leasing a housing facility.
Supporting people framework
The Information and transport revolutions have allowed production units to be de linked from design units, and allowed parts that are manufactured throughout the world to be delivered to assembly plants when and where they are needed. Depending on the need to achieve low-cost production or to tap a pool of human capital, firms are relocating production units all over the world. This requires a degree of coordination that was impossible just a few decades ago, when parts all needed to be made reasonably close to the final assembly point (Dunning 1999). Although these developments have not made firms indifferent to their location, they have greatly widened their choices to include most of the world. By reducing the importance of transport and coordination costs, the information revolution has increased the importance of other variables such as international relative wages, the skills of the labor force, and the friendliness of government policy. If endogenous technological change lies at the heart of economic growth, governments cannot avoid influencing growth, since almost every government policy, including those related to education, competition, and redistribution, will have some influence on the amount, location, and direction of technological change (Dunning 1999).
Some economists argue, however, that endogenous technological change should not be inserted into macro-growth models because this will encourage governments to engage in misguided technology-enhancing interventions. Concern about growth and international competitiveness in a rapidly globalizing world lies behind many current controversies concerning the government’s place in the economy (Dunning 1999). The background to these controversies is the realization of the failure of centrally planned economies to produce sustained growth combined with the new understanding that governments have played different roles in the growth process in different countries. Some of the close relationships between government and the private sector in the newly industrialized countries were more appropriate to, and possibly easier to manage, in catch-up rather than leading-edge situations. As a country undertaking a fundamental transformation of its position in the world, the successes and failures of government policy should be of considerable interest to other countries (VlieT 1990).
The supporting people framework focuses on preventing homelessness, make sure that the housing community will be safe and free of crimes; make sure that health is improved and there is lesser health inequalities; and make sure that there is support for independence. The supporting people framework has services that include providing advices on rent and other money issues; assistance in security and safety in the housing community; assist in the prevention of any negative issues with the community; help to have sources of income to pay for rents and other financial matters; assistance when one member of the housing community wants to transfer to another place. These services aims to make sure that any housing experience the private owners have will be experienced by social housing members.
Community care strategy
Social policy-makers engage in a range of activities related to discovering and trying to solve social problems, or meeting an array of human needs. Yet the very idea that there are social problems out there waiting to be discovered is also controversial. Social policy addresses what are called social needs, such as the need for good education, health care or child care. There are equally interesting questions to be asked about how some needs are discovered and why others are not (Bessant et al., 2006). To discover and solve social problems or meet certain human needs, people engaged in social policy undertake research, evaluate programs, write speeches for politicians, draft legislation and make decisions to spend money in order to solve a wide range of social problems. One of the ways a social problem is discovered is by someone engaging in research. Many policy-makers do research in order to discover certain things about the world (Bessant et al., 2006).
They may want to know more about the scale and causes of social problems like poverty, homelessness, crime or unemployment, or they may want to know more about the needs of people with disabilities, or how single mothers do or don’t cope with the cost of house rental. Time is also given to research intended to evaluate the effectiveness of existing government policies and programs. Policy-makers also engage in advocacy. This involves putting forward arguments about why governments should do something new or better to fix a certain social problem. Advocacy is performed by people who work inside government bureaucracies as much as it is done by people working for welfare organizations, universities or advocacy groups (Bessant et al., 2006). Social policy refers to what governments do when they attempt to improve the quality of people’s lives by providing a range of income support, community services and support programs. Although social policy is an activity that governments do, it is not just confined to the realm of government, however. There has already been reference to the fact that some people do research or engage in advocacy for policy change. This is one way of recognizing that policy-making involves many other organizations besides government bureaucracies and departments. This is one reason for referring to the idea of a policy-making community (Zarembka 1990).
The community care strategy focuses on ensuring that there is equality in the access of housing facilities and no discrimination happens. The community care strategy helps in regenerating some public communities and promotes the inclusion of people who has community care needs. The community care strategy has priorities on helping aging people; people with physical disability; people with learning disability; people with bouts on addictions; asylum seekers and refugees. The community care strategy takes a look at the situation in a certain community and creates changes in it so that it can accommodate the needs of different people needing community care. The community care strategy makes sure that the people who need assistance on housing will be given communities that fit their needs.
The experiences of Amy woods
Services had to be performed in proximity to the consumer, and were therefore considered non-tradable for a long time. They also necessitate a close interaction between the supplier and the consumer, and the costs to the consumer include not only the price paid but also learning and other costs (Aharoni & Nachum 2000). Some of these costs are incurred in the inter-action phase while others are incurred in isolation. Services are also intangible and non-storable and therefore cannot be transferred across national borders. Instead, they have to be produced at the time and place in which they are consumed. Therefore, in most services delivery to foreign markets must be achieved by establishing a presence in that market, often by foreign direct investment (Aharoni & Nachum 2000).
A development is the flourishing of huge global firms offering services across many countries in services previously considered non-tradable. Indeed, technological developments have allowed increasing tradability of services. These firms seem to enjoy advantages derived from the ownership of intangible assets such as organizational skills, technological knowledge, organizational capabilities, or the unique ability to transfer knowledge horizontally. These advantages are transferred from one country to another within the firm, not between firms (Aharoni & Nachum 2000). Parallel to the increase in the importance of services interest has shifted from an analysis of the service sector in a national setting to an examination of international trade and investment in services. There has been a surge of interest in looking for a better understanding of the reasons firms expand into the international arena. Since the 1980s, there has been also a growing attention paid to questions such as the best and most effective ways of organizing, managing and transferring knowledge, as well as bench-marking best practices, within a multinational firm. Several notions held as axioms in the past have turned out to be obsolete. All in all, there has been a gradual shift from an economy of goods to an economy of services and to new products and services increasingly based on knowledge. These shifts have fundamental theoretical implications, as well as policy ramifications (Aharoni & Nachum 2000).
Amy Woods who is 21 years old is living in housing for those who have risk of creating offenses and have a history of offending behavior. She was referred by the probation service and she was ordered to partake in community services as punishment for her offending behavior. She stayed within Gloucestershire area. What she prefers about the supported housing living is the joint risk assessment and management support plan that has to be agreed, which involves the service users and referral link project. The things she disliked in the housing were if she wants to get a job there was issues and barriers that surrounds the housing service. One issue is the rent for her stay in the housing facility. The rent would be to expensive due to the minimum wage that she would get because she lacks some skills. Another issue is the support given to her may cease because it does not give her the appropriate benefit.
Conclusion
The housing policy concentrates on making sure that people will have housing facilities that is dependable and affordable. It intends to make sure that there will be fairness and equality in public housing communities. The government has a long tradition of affordable social rented housing. It has its own home ownership options wherein people can share the house’s ownership with the landlord. The supporting people framework policy focuses on preventing homelessness, make sure that the housing community will be safe and free of crimes; make sure that health is improved and there is lesser health inequalities; and make sure that there is support for independence. The community care strategy focuses on ensuring that there is equality in the access of housing facilities and no discrimination happens. The community care strategy helps in regenerating some public communities and promotes the inclusion of people who has community care needs. The partnership approach between referrer and the housing provider is easy to engage with and well planned putting the service user at focal point.
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