Poverty & Housing: Causes, Impacts, & Policy Analysis - Level 3

This essay critically examines the multifaceted issue of poverty, focusing on its meaning, causes, and impacts, particularly within the context of housing. It delves into the advantages and disadvantages of poverty, governmental measurement methods, and contrasting theoretical perspectives such as Marxist theory and the new right approach. The essay further analyzes government strategies for tackling poverty, including wealth redistribution and welfare programs, while assessing the impact of poverty on life chances and well-being. Through a historical lens, it explores housing developments in the UK, highlighting the evolution from industrial revolution slums to modern homelessness reduction efforts, and concludes by evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of current policies aimed at addressing poverty and housing challenges. Desklib provides access to this essay and other study resources for students.

Running head: POVERTY
Poverty
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

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Poverty
Introduction
Poverty is the state where a human being lack a socially acceptable amount of money.
When a person lacks enough material possession and financial possession he is termed to be
poor man. The term poverty includes the lack of money where the people cannot satisfy the
basic needs for himself and his family. Poverty is usually associated with poor health and also
the low level of education. Poverty is divided into certain criterion. The first would include
the people who lives under the borderline of starvation of death. The other would include the
people who to suffer from nutrition, housing and clothing (Landes 2015).
1.1
Like any other thing there are certain advantages as well as disadvantages of being
poor. If a person is poor he receives some amount of help from the government and other
community who offer donations to the people who belong to the poverty level. Those people
receive help from the community as well as the friends and neighbors. There are many social
workers who help the people who belong to the poverty level. In the developed countries and
also in the developing nations the government has set up few plans and policies that has been
designed to assist the poor people. The assistant include the financial assistance as well as the
assistance in receiving proper education. Apart from the assistance from the member of the
church and the neighbors. This happens when a person becomes poor not because of his own
reason. The examples of this are the poor medical condition or if the house of a person is
suddenly burned down or during natural disaster the person suffer from any loss. In such
cases the poverty comes in the form of cash and also in the form of other assistance like food,
transportation and others. On the other hand there are many disadvantages of being poor. The
person who is poor is dependent on others for help. In many societies the poor people are

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marginalized and they are looked upon by the people of the society. The poor people are
unable to have good food or they are unable to receive proper nutrition. This results in
sickness and sometimes due to lack of proper treatment people even die. Their life is always
at risk. The children belonging to the poverty level are denied from receiving best education.
It lowers the morale of the person and the person always feel unworthy (Lewis 2017).
The government measures the status of poverty by comparing the pre-tax cash against
a threshold that is set at three times the cost of a minimum food diet. The government of
different countries adopt different measures like conducting the census survey to keep a track
of the number of people suffering from poverty. With the help of statistics the company
measures the number of poverty people in the country and the government also identifies the
area in which the poverty is more concentrated (Ravallion 2017).
2.1
The theories that have been consideration in order to understand the cause of poverty
are the theory of Marxist and the new theory of right. According to the Marxist theory the
poverty has a relationship with capitalism and the human rights. Poverty in this is considered
to be a process or a relationship in which the people are involved. A parallel can be between
poverty and human rights. This idea has been contradicted by the people holding a
conservative vision. According to them there is no relation between the poverty and the
human rights. The people holding the idea of liberal approach argues the fact that human
rights is related to poverty. The liberal theory holds the fact that the civil and the political
rights helps in eliminating poverty and the negative aspects that resides all over the world.
The radical version holds the fact that the human rights and the poverty are antagonistic. In
simple words it can be said that the modern state is based on the capitalism and
neoliberalism. These are contrary to the demands of human rights. The Marxists view is in

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line with the radical view. It considers the fact that the very understanding of the right is
complicit in the production of poverty (Meyer 2015).
The new right approach of poverty believes that the capitalist system is capable of
providing stability and wealth for all. According to this theory one of the prime cause of
poverty is single parenthood. This approach made extensive research on this and they stated
the fact that single mothers have increased in number and they are dependent on the state and
the illegitimacy rates that have risen rapidly. The fathers who do not pay for their children
and for the mothers have given rise to the poor mothers and poorer children. According to
this theory there are too many young people who are dependent on the welfare state (Da
Costa and Dias 2015).
3.1
The government in different countries tackle the issue of poverty in a different way.
The example of the UK government can be taken into account. The government makes effort
to support the families into work by improving the living standards and by raising the
educational attainment that are fundamental aim in setting the poverty strategy of the
government. In order to decrease the level of poverty the government is taking measures to
redistribute the wealth. The government has made efforts to reduce the income gap by hiking
the federal minimum wage and it took the initiative to increase the rate of tax. The
government has instituted many programs (Lynch and Boggess 2016). There is a drawback in
this method. This method will redistribute the wealth and it would actually alleviate the
poverty. The government made the wages high and they have arranged the federal anti-
poverty programs. The government have formed few policies in order to reduce policy. The
government has offered means-tested welfare benefits to the poorest in the society. This
include the housing benefits, giving benefits to the employees. The government has offered

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free education to the ones who cannot afford education along with free meal. The policies
are:
Education- the government considers the fact that the greater spending on education and
training can enable higher skilled workforce.
Foreign aid- this includes the aids that are received from the developed countries that can be
used to invest in developing better health care and education. However this is a temporary
process as it is increases the dependency on the foreign government. At one moment the aid
might stop and during that period the government might run short of funds.
Diversification of economy- this involves the diversification of the economy away from the
agriculture to the manufacturing. This enables greater economic development but this might
be difficult to do without the right skills and the infrastructure (Clark 2015).
3.1
Poverty plays a major role in affecting the life chances of the people. Being poor
means being categorized by the other people of the society. It has a negative impact on the
life chances of the individuals. It would add limitations to the choices and the options in the
society. A person finds himself more miserable and more unworthy while he belongs to the
status of poverty. It largely affects the life of the persons. Poverty in maximum times lead to
many crimes and illegal activities like smuggling, murder, kidnapping and even theft. The
people who indulges himself in theft does so because of the poor financial condition. A
person is in dire need of money and this is the reason in order to earn money and fulfill the
needs of his family indulges in the short cut way of earning money. This is the similar case
for the ones who indulged himself into the illegal activities. The poor people cannot afford
costly cloths and they cannot buy cloths frequently compared to the richer ones. Sometimes
they cannot pay their bills. The people staying in rent are more likely to be poor than the

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owners who belong to the class of rich. The poor people are more likely to be in depth than
the ones who are rich. Even the children who belong to the category of poor are unable to
attain remarkable achievements in the field of education. As a result they lag behind in the
world and they cannot make progress compared to the ones who are rich. They are the
victims of burglary. They suffer from the mental health more than the ones who are rich
(Duran 2017).
4.1
Poverty can be seen more clearly from through the housing well-being. In order to
consider this area the history of the housing in UK has been taken into account. During the
industrial revolution there was a huge growth of the inner cities. There was a huge influx of
the people from villages to cities. There was a difficulty in accommodation. The occupations
was built by private enterprise and they were often squalid, with large factory populations
that came into the small area. This lead to the slums. The slums consists of two rooms, one
was located in the upstairs and the other was located in the down-stairs. The water came from
a communal cast-iron pump. With outdoor lavatories. The First World War brought about
huge change in the social, economic and the political system. One of the remarkable change
was the 1915 Rent Act (Lundahl 2015). This act limited the amount the private landlords
could raise rents on the tenants. The workers faced long hours and rising rents. This is the
reason they protested against this made the government to intervene. In the medieval period,
England witnessed great amount of poverty. There were many beggars and they were
provided shelter by the churches. The church also ran the hospitals in the Middle ages. In the
16th century there was a rise in population and at the same time it was difficult to find jobs in
the country (Madden and Marcuse 2017). The homelessness increased in UK in the past
years. There were many people in England who were left without any homes. Their primary
occupation was to beg and to sleep in the footpaths in the road itself. This was more evident

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after the Second World War (Clarkson and Coleman 2015). The other thing that was noticed
was the growth in home ownership. The house-building boom continued when the
conservatives returned to power in the year 1951. The emphasis shifted at the end of the
decade towards the clearance of the slum. Many people who lived in slums were uprooted
from their homes. Poverty was the real cause of this. The people who were removed from the
houses were poor and they were treated badly by the society. Their existence were not given
any importance and they were banished from their residences. Their life was always at risk
and had no stability. This was the impact of the poverty (Davis and Sanchez-Martinez 2015).
4.1
The Homelessness Reduction Bill received Royal Assent and therefore it became an
Act of Parliament on 27th April, 2017. It would place new legal duties on the English
Councils in order to assist the ones who are left homeless and they are living at a risk of
being homelessness. The Act draws on the work of an independent panel of experts
established by Crisis in the year 2015 (Powell 2015). The aim of the panel of the experts was
to identify the strengths and the weaknesses of the current legislation that affect single
homeless people in England. It further aims at proposing the improvements to the legal
framework to prevent and to tackle single homelessness more effectively in England. Under
the new act the period an individual has been threatened with homelessness has extended
from 28 days to 56 days (Been et al. 2016). The objective of the extension is to encourage the
housing authorities to act quickly and in a proactive manner and it should allow the housing
authorities with more times do the work done for preventing this. Under the act, the housing
authorities can take certain actions if an applicant deliberately and unreasonably refuses to
cooperate with the key steps in their personalized housing plan. It enables the effective
prevention and the relief of homelessness that requires the public body to work together in

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order to help address the multiple factors that cause the homelessness of an individual (Best
and Kleven 2017).
5.1
The, ‘plan for the no second night out’, policy is owned by the ministerial working
group. The plan was created in order to help prevent homelessness and it was framed to
support the people who suffered from the threat of homelessness (Figueroa et al. 2017). In
this policy the local government group and the government were to work together in order to
develop a proposal for the use of community based budgets for the ones who are homeless.
The weakness in this is that the government should pass on responsibility to other
departments for tackling this problem. There was lack of enthusiasm in the other departments
to tackle this responsibility. This can be said that there was lack of communication between
the government and the other departments. This is the reason this was a failure. A huge
investment was required in this which was not possible all the time by the government
(Pavlakis, Goff and Miller 2017).
The welfare reforms are the biggest reason of homelessness in England. The welfare
reforms include the reforms such as the bedroom tax, sanctions and housing benefit cuts that
acts as fuel to the homelessness crisis in England. They acts as a pressure on the vulnerable
households. UK has always remained a center of homelessness. It is because of the shortage
of housing and high rents (Flatau et al. 2016). The welfare removes the poor people from the
inner city to the neighborhoods that are cheaper. The official studies showed that the
homelessness increased with the passing years and no policy till date has successfully
eradicated the same. They are left with some or the other pitfalls (Shinn, Brown and Gubits
2017).
.

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