Housing Problems and Social Work Advocacy in a Home-Owning Society

Abstract

This study examines housing problems in Singapore’s residualized social housing sector within a public housing system with a high rate of homeownership, and the challenges for social work practice and advocacy. Focus groups were conducted with 51 social workers from seven community-based Family Service Centers. They highlighted problems with access and stability in social housing, and pressures to purchase housing in a home-owning society. Social work interventions focused on the individual and encountered many challenges. While the social workers articulated the structural origins of housing problems, they did not see themselves having a direct role in policy advocacy. Possible reasons include constraints on resources and skills, the role that has been prescribed for social workers within the housing system, and the use of bureaucratic discretion which limits social workers’ policy knowledge and participation. In Singapore and other places where housing policy encourages homeownership over accessible social housing, advocacy must target both the policy sources of housing problems and the policy barriers to social work intervention. Future research can examine how the interaction of homeownership and social housing policies affect low-income people, and the way policy impositions and organizational factors combine to shape social work advocacy.

Keywords:

• Public housing
• social housing
• homeownership
• housing problems
• housing policy
• social work
• advocacy
• discretion
• Singapore

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the social workers who participated in the study and for research assistance from Asher Goh.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Exclusivity

This article has not been published elsewhere and has not been submitted simultaneously for publication elsewhere.

Ethics

Ethical approval for this project was given by the Institutional Review Board at the Singapore University of Social Sciences (CPE/UEN 200504979Z).

Notes

1 This wait period was removed for divorcees in 2018.

2 The Maintenance of Parents Act allows low-income elderly parents who do not have the means to support themselves to seek maintenance from their children through a legal channel.

3 This rule has since become less defined, stating only that past property ownership will be taken into account when social housing applications are assessed.

4 In comparison, regular flat owners may sell their flats after an occupancy of 5 years.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the National University of Singapore (Research Grant No. R-603-000-170-133) and the Singapore University of Social Sciences (Research Grant No. RF15UC02).