Social housing refers to let at low rent on a reliable arrangement for those struggling with accommodation based on the housing costs. Social housing is not a private initiative when tenants make agreements with the landlord but a project where the local council allocation scheme distributes the housing among the identified individuals. This process has been enhanced by the Localism Act of 2011 where the council determines the eligibility for a social housing program and also allows for reasonable preference for groups which are deemed to be on dire need. Unfortunately even for the social housing projects affordability has become an issue which has worsened the situation (Baxter and Murphy 2017, p. 8). The affordability problem is due to the increased demand for housing units and the long waiting list. The government has become reluctant in tackling the housing problem considering that the current demand is at 300,000 housing units per annum but the government has fallen behind this number and the deficit when compounded is unpleasant (Wilson, Barton, and Smith, 2017, p. 12). Various factors such as poverty rate, immigration, and prices for the new housing units contribute to the current problem. Thus, the research shall delve to under the cause of the problem, and the finding will be shared by decision makers to help in design solution for the social housing problem in the UK.
Aims and objectives
This section will identify the aim of the study and objectives that shall provide further details on how the aim shall be achieved.
The aim
The research shall aim to understand the causes of the rising social housing problem in the UK.
The objective
What is the connection between poverty rates in the UK and the social housing problem?
How to the immigration issue contribute to the social housing problem in the UK?
What is the relationship between rising prices for houses leading to social housing concern in the UK?
Methodology
The methodology that will be applied by the research is based on it confirmed effectiveness in obtained the required data that will be utilised in deducing a conclusion about the social housing problem in the UK. There shall be various sub-headings that shall be used to organise the methodology.
Participants
To obtain the desired data, various participants will be contacted to share information about the study. The target will be 51 participants including human beings and private and public agencies dealing with the housing issue in the UK. First will be 15 UK citizens who have to secure a unit from the social housing program within the past five years. Second, will be 15 UK citizens’ citizens who have aspirations probably on the waiting list for the on-going social housing projects. Third, will be 15 individuals struggling with homeless not or not able to afford a social housing unit. The fourth will be five private developers or agencies that officer housing services. Finally will be the homes and communities agency which the UK department that funds new affordable housing for UK people. The agency will be a source of various secondary data especially the one that people cannot provide or help in verifying what the research will obtain from the field. The first four participants will be randomly selected to reduce bias and improve the accuracy of the results. Thus, the random probability sampling technique will be utilised to achieve this goal.
Materials
Various materials will be needed to arrange the data into meaningful information. There will be computers, data analysis software (excel spreadsheets and SPSS), printers, binders, and stellar pins. Furthermore, there will be two to three field interviewers who will issue the questionnaires will similar questions to the target participants to obtain the desired information.
Design
The study will be a qualitative study that will utilise an exploratory design. There will be ones independent variable will be social housing and three dependent variables which will include the change in demand, the availability and affordability of the social housing units. Also, there will be an extraneous variable that will control the other variable, the construction of new housing units by both government and private investors. Both within and between groups design will be used to identify where the problem lies to determine areas for prioritising.
Data collection procedure
To achieve the research objectives and provide answers to the problem question, both primary and secondary data will be utilised. The secondary data will provide the background information to build the research and to help compare and verify with what shall be contributed by the primary sources. The source of the secondary data shall be the homes and communities agency and the already published literature on the topic of research. The secondary data will be obtained from a questionnaire answers which will be shared by the first, second, and third group of participants as described above. The interviews shall be applied either face to face, electronically or through phone call depending on the availability of the respondent.
Data analysis
Once the data has been obtained an analysis will be needed to help in generating information that shall guide decision making and action. In this context, either the excel spreads or SPSS programs shall be used to analyse and give meaning to the data acquired from answers provided by participants responding to the questionnaire prompts.
Discussion
This section shall identify three themes that shall help in justifying and substantiating the aim and objectives of the study and the methodology that will be applied in the data collection activities.
The connection between poverty rates in the UK and the social housing problem
Statistics have revealed that at least 2.3% of Londoners living in poverty belong to a household where someone earns an income (The Guardian 2017, p.2). This situation is despite the decline in the poverty rate from 29% to 27%, and the conclusion is that having a job is not an assurance for protection against social and economic hardships. Furthermore, the wealth and income inequalities are too wide where 10% of city resident control over 50% of the wealth while 50% control slightly above 5%. Moreover, the wealth owned by a household decreased as shown by 2012-14 statistics (The Guardian 2017, p. 4). When such statistics are linked with the ever high rent and house prices in the UK which is among the highest in the world, it becomes clear why the housing problem exists (Chance, Chapman, and de Souza 2015, p. 3). This situation leads to the affordability of the homes including those that have been provided by the social housing projects.
The immigration issue contribute to the social housing problem in the UK
Statistics have revealed that since 2004 the population of the immigrants have proliferated. The 2016 statistics tic revealed that 18% of the UK working age group are the immigrant population (Wadsworth 2017, p. 7). However, this situation has a direct effect on the housing considering that the government allocate the social housing to the immigrants which the UK citizens consider an unfair advantage for the foreigners (Robinson 2010, p. 59). Hence, since the immigration has been growing and currently with the idea of Brexit and more naturalised UK citizen become of age to need housing, the crisis will only continue to grow. That is why there has been a suggestion to introduce policies that will help control this competitive challenge considering that immigrants are a critical force for economic development in the UK.
The relationship between rising prices for houses and the social housing concern in the UK
During the past 40 years, the house prices have grown faster in the UK than in any other OECD country which has contributed to the ever-growing housing crisis. For instance, the average price of a house is between 10 to 16 times higher than the average income in London which make the situation impossible to afford a house (Dianati, Zimmermann, and Davies, 2017, p. 5). This situation has led to the question of whether the policies for affordable housing are congruent with the income of people and the demand for the units as shown by Smyth (2015, p.12). According to Walters (2015, p. 47), the high rent rates that workers have to pay for instance in south-east and London makes it difficult for people to disposable income to afford a home. Moreover, this is worsened by the volatility of the prices for buying homes both from social and public housing services as shown by KPMG and Shelter (2015, p. 6)
The timelines
The research will take three months to generate the final report that shall be shared with all relevant bodies for appropriate use, for instance, the policymakers and the implementers of the social housing project. The three months shall be viewed in terms of 12 weeks where different research activities shall be assigned as shall be depicted in the Gantt chart below.
Activities
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Proposal writing
Seeking approval for the research
Data collection
Data analysis
Report wring
Submission of the report
References
Chance, T., Chapman, A. and de Souza, M., 2015, Tackling our Housing Crisis, Why Building more Houses will not Solve the Problem. Green House. Retrieved from https://www.greenhousethinktank.org/uploads/4/8/3/2/48324387/housing-final.pdf
Dianati, K., Zimmermann, N. and Davies, M., 2017, September. London’s Housing Crisis. System Dynamics Society.
Baxter D. and Murphy L. 2017, England, Affordable Housing In. "Priced Out?" PPR, the Institute for Public Policy Research. Retrieved from https://www.ippr.org/files/2017-11/priced-out-England-November-2017.pdf
KPMG and Shelter. (2015). Building the Homes, We Need; A Program for the 2015 Government Retrieved from https://home.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2015/03/building-the-homes-we-need.pdf
Robinson, D., 2010. New immigrants and migrants in social housing in Britain: discursive themes and lived realities. Policy & Politics, 38(1), pp.57-77.
The Guardian. 2017, October, More than half of Londoners in poverty are in working families. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/09/more-than-half-of-londoners-in-poverty-are-in-working-families
Smyth, S., 2015, April. Embedding financialisation: A policy review of the Affordable Homes Programme. In Housing Studies Association Conference.
Wadsworth, J., 2017. Immigration and the UK Economy (No. 039). Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
Walters, G., 2015. The challenges of superdiversity for social housing (No. 5). Iris Working Paper Series.
Wilson, W., Barton, C. and Smith, L., 2017. Tackling the under-supply of housing in England.
