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.