Public Housing as an Instrument of Income Redistribution: Social and Economic Impact

Excerpt from the full-text article: Housing possesses certain characteristics which qualify it for an instrumental role in income redistribution policy. Housing is a commodity which for the poor is generally deficient in quality and frequently inadequate in quantity even at modest quality levels. The poor pay a substantial share of their income for housing. The majority of families with incomes under four thousand dollars spend over one-fourth of their total income on housing, while most of those with incomes under two thousand dollars annually normally spend over one-third for housing, as compared with less than one sixth of average family income devoted to housing in the case of the total population. And the poor are generally concentrated, in part because of a lack of cheap housing elsewhere, in neighborhoods where the pathology of poverty reinforces itself. In such areas public facilities, including schools, health care services, police protection and sanitation, are generally inferior. Minority persons generally are compelled to pay prices for housing that reflect the racially discriminatory attitudes of whites. Poor minority persons, therefore, may be obtaining even less housing for their outlays of money and deriving even less in the way of public services as a result. Some of the economic costs incurred by the poor or by public agencies on their behalf as a result of inadequate housing may be indirectly reflected in expenditures for medical care. Social costs of deficient housing may be identified with poverty behavior patterns, such as the incidence of juvenile delinquency. The purpose of the present study is to explore the relationship between client alienation and efforts by the social work profession to intervene in behalf of the welfare poor. Specifically, this investigation focuses on the ideas, proposals, and studies that have appeared in the social work literature that would indicate efforts by social workers to increase or decrease client alienation. Social work is practiced primarily in agency and organizational settings. Attention will be given to the nature of these structures to determine how they affect client alienation and prevent social workers from relieving alienation. The dimensions of client alienation will be discussed using Melvin Seeman\u27s classification of powerlessness and meaninglessness. A further expansion of the concept of client alienation will be obtained by looking for ways to prevent alienation by combining social work concepts with the concepts of micro-macro society as suggested in the writings of Amitai Etzioni

Factors Leading to Client Degradation in Welfare and Public Housing

Excerpt from the full-text article: Degradation and humiliation are the consequences of using many social services In our society. Added to this is classification as a non-normal or a failure because one turns to a government source for help. The person is stigmatized for use and the agency is negatively labeled by both non-users and users. While these public opinions stem partly from a long-held philosophy regarding the role of social services and the nature of the poor, these attitudes are reinforced and strengthened by specific policies and practices in the administration and structuring of the programs. Comparisons between services in the United States and Britain, Sweden, Norway, show there is wide variation in the degree the public and the user perceive of the service as an unacceptable or acceptable method of meeting a need and the degree the public give It a strong negative label. Evidence indicates that within one country this varies -for different services; in the United States, for example, public welfare, mental hospital and public housing programs are highly stigmatized while Old Age Survivors Insurance, various educational scholarship programs and possibly Medicare lack this negative label. The purpose of the research described below was to investigate what types of institutional arrangements or administrative policies are conducive to a publicly acceptable program for one social service, public housing. A further purpose was to examine both the historical and contemporary social and economic factors in a society that explain why a negative label or stigma is imposed on this social service. The focus was on British social services, especially public housing, and based on the author\u27s two years of research in Britain; comparisons were made with policies in American public housing, based on the author\u27s San Francisco housing project study, and on data gathered in Interviews with Swedish and Norwegian social service officials

Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEWS The Swiss Way of Welfare: Lessons for the Western World. Ralph Segalman. New York: Praeger, 1986, 205 pp., $39.95. - Reviewed by Isidor Walliman Vieillesses: Situations, Itineraires et Modes de Vie des Personnes Agees Aujourd\u27Hui. Christian Lalive d\u27Epiany (Ed.). Saint Saphorin, Switzerland: Edition Georgi, 1983. - Reviewed by Elizabeth D. Huttman with the assistance of Anna Marie Rampmaier and W and N. Weber. Wohlfahrtsstaat Schweiz (The Swiss Welfare State). Antonin Wagner. Bern: Paul Haupt, 1985, 248 pp., S.E 32. - Reviewed by Shimon S. Gottschalk The Mean Season: The Attack on the Welfare State. Fred Block, Richard A. Cloward, Barbara Ehrenreich, Frances Fox Piven. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987, 205 pp.,$8.95. - Reviewed by Robert Sheak Shared Responsibility: Families and Social Policy. Robert M. Moroney. Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine Publishing Co., 1986, $31.95 cloth,$14.94 paper. - Reviewed by Christina R. Curtiss

Urban housing segregation of minorities in Western Europe and the United States /

Includes bibliographical references and index.Mode of access: Internet