Discrimination Women Experience in the UK Housing Market - Essay Example

Discrimination faced by women in housing in the UK 2007 Introduction The housing market in the United Kingdom is essentially a property-related issue and issues of gender are typically not considered in this. However, a large number of women from all racial and ethnic communities live either on the streets or in an extremely discriminatory environment. Social exclusion of women occurs as a result of poverty, low wages, unemployment, inadequate facilities, political imbalances and stereotyping all of which discriminates one particular group against others. In the United Kingdom, urban regeneration policies take race into account to some extent but it does not consider gender at all. As a result, a significant proportion of women from all racial and ethnic communities find themselves homeless, driven to the state because of poverty, domestic violence, unemployment, low skills as a result of lack of education and stereotyping. In this paper, I will discuss the policies towards urban poverty and housing to analyze why the trend of homeless women persists. Urban housing in the UK Housing is often analyzed in terms of the market in which demand and supply determines the efficiency of allocation. This depends on the fulfillment of the basic assumptions of an efficient market – free flow of information, absence of monopoly power, existence of a large number of suppliers and buyers. This, however, rarely is the case in any housing market. Usually, the housing market is dominated by a few large suppliers; location being a crucial factor, there cannot be free flow of information; the housing market depends critically on the credit market; there are environmental externalities that affect the housing market and are also affected by it; and the market is extremely volatile because of speculative pressures. Besides, if the housing market is left entirely to the market, there will be a significant section of the population who will be left out of the competition because of lack of purchasing power despite having considerable needs for housing (Barlow and Duncan, 1994). In a market-dominated housing sector, homelessness remains a serious issue because of shortage of housing in the face of a growing population, lack of entitlement to land and housing as well as the personal situation of the people, most typically unemployment, alcoholism, domestic violence, marital breakdown, etc. In most societies, housing is the root cause of deprivation. A survey by Gordon and Pantazis (1997, cited in RGU) found that most people found housing needs, including a heating, indoor toilet, bath, home décor, refrigeration and room for enough beds in damp-free rooms, as the essentials of living conditions. In the housing market, deprivation is often concentrated. Although slum estates are available both in the private and public sectors, it is usually found that the applicants who are the most deprived can exert least choice (RGU). Social segregation is most acute in housing as it is in education or employment. This stems not only from economic factors like low financial resources but also from the policy-making process. The housing market in the UK is usually classified according to the tenure system – owner-occupied, local authority housing, registered social landlords including housing associations and stock transfers and private rents. Over the 20th century, the housing tenure system has moved from largely private renting to owner-occupied while people who are too poor to buy houses have to depend on social the housing sector, which has grown in importance. Council housing, which were first built after World War I and as then targeted for the poor displaced by slum clearance, has traditionally borne the stigma of low quality houses, contributes to as much as one-fourth of the housing in the UK. Although after the World War II, council houses were built in the form of high-rise buildings to accommodate the poor, these are less in focus since the 1970s and are part of welfare policies at present. The average income of the people living in council houses is just a little above the mortgage that owners of houses pay. Ownership of houses in the UK rests on tax advantages and credit availability. While usually the older people, who have relatively low incomes, have paid off the mortgages than the younger borrowers, the senior citizens who are in the higher income brackets invest in more houses through credit. More recently, even low-income people are encouraged to own houses on mortgage since the target population of high-income groups has become saturated. This has resulted in a situation of financial distress if income is unstable, uncertainties and vulnerability to market fluctuations, risks faced by finance companies and legal issues (RGU). The urban housing market in Britain now also has the ‘worst estates’, which are characterized by accommodation of the poor who live in ghetto-like conditions in damp houses without heating, maintenance or community facilities like garbage clearing. These houses, mostly left empty otherwise, are unattractive in terms of design and location, and are most prone to vandalism. Although a series of policies have been directed towards housing in inner cities, these are not the areas in the UK where majority of the poor, particularly the ethnic minority, live. The policies, therefore, have not really helped the socially excluded people in finding their housing needs. Gender and housing in the UK Although men and women generally live in similar housing conditions, mostly in couple, one in two lone mothers live in social housing. While 81 percent of couples live in owned houses, the pattern changes in the case of lone women. In 2001, while 54 percent of single men lived in own house, only 40 percent of single women had own accommodation. In case of widowers and widows, however, the percentage of the former with own house was 51 percent while that of the latter 57 percent. For divorced or separated men and women, there was no difference. While accommodation problems are most critical for lone parents, nine out of ten families headed by lone parents are headed by women. Since lone parents are given a high priority in social housing, most such women-headed families end up in social housing with half of the lone mothers with dependent children living in such housing (Government of UK, 2001). In 2001, of the 890,000 adult residents living communal housing, 483,000 were women. While the number of residents living in educational institutions like students’ halls were similar in both sexes, there were differences in the other categories. As much as half of the women in social housing lived in residential care and nursing homes and 87 percent of such women survived on state pension, the number of women in such establishments were two and half times that of men (Government of UK, 2001). Homelessness in the UK According to the charity, Crisis, there are about 380,000 homeless people in the UK, including those who live in hostels, Bed & Breakfast accommodations, squats, friends’ houses or in overcrowded houses. About 100,170 households (47,800 in priority need) in England and 39,681 households (29,546 in priority need) in Scotland were homeless in 2005. The figures were marginally higher in England while in Scotland, homeless applications rose from 29,068 in 1989-90 to 54,829 in 2003-04. The number of rough sleepers, the most critical category among homeless individuals, however, fell from 1,850 in 1998 to 459 in 2005, of which 221 people slept in Greater London areas. The number of people who have been homeless for over two years is on the rise. According to Crisis, people on an average become homeless in nine years from the trigger that lead to such states. In four weeks, they become acclimatized to the situation on the street and after that it becomes very difficult to get back to mainstream life. Homeless women in the UK About 10 to 25 percent of the homeless people in the UK are women. Among young single homeless people, the proportion of women is higher, at 20-40 percent. The main cause of homelessness among women is reported to be domestic violence, as 63 percent of the homeless women in the age group 30 to 49 reported. Usually, homeless women are more likely to have been raised by foster parents and one in four women in hostels are pregnant at any point of time (Crisis, 2006). Although rough sleeping among the homeless people has decreased over the recent times, the number of women who have been sleeping rough or living in hostels is on the rise. Besides the explicitly homeless people, hidden homelessness occur when people stay with friends and relatives. According to a Crisis survey (2003), 72 percent of the homeless people in the UK had stayed with friends or relatives at some point of time. Staying with friends and relatives is usually the first port of call. There are various reasons for this – lack of availability of alternative accommodation, particularly in rural areas, women leaving home on account of domestic violence, etc. Typically, more women than men are seen to stay with friends and relatives. Usually, people who live under such hidden homelessness conditions are younger and single and one in four are employed (Crisis, 2003). The average age of homeless women has fallen, with 24 percent of homeless women being under 30 in 1972, which increased to 67 percent in 1991. Women are more likely to stay at alternate accommodation like friends’ houses, thus the actual figure of homeless women being larger. Although there are various causes for homelessness among women, the most typical reason is domestic violence. Most such women have little knowledge about services for homeless people. Most homeless women have been found to be homeless more than once (Crisis, 1999). Very few homeless women are in formal employment. Many of them would like to be employed but are doubtful whether they would be better off. They would then lose Housing Benefits and the Income Support of Job Seekers Allowance. Lacking the necessary skills, women are usually reluctant to go for vocational training (Crisis, 1999). Discrimination faced by homeless women Homeless women are more vulnerable to street violence than men, irrespective of the type of accommodation they are in, ranging from rough sleeping to B&Bs. They often have to adopt various survival strategies, including sex work. Stories about victimization of women circulate to heighten the fear. One homeless woman described one such story in a Crisis survey, “There have been some cases where girls have been taken advantage of. There’s also been cases where guys have been abused. I mean have you heard about this woman… who got stabbed to death… Jack the Ripper and the guy had only been out of prison about, he’d been in for eleven years for murder and he come out. The thing was, I’m not gonna say what happened … but she was stabbed to death … She was a very nice lady. I only met her one time and she got stabbed to death and chucked in the river” (Crisis, 2005). There is a high incidence of unplanned pregnancy among young homeless women living in hostels in UK. In a survey by Crisis (2000) of 31 hostels in London, 24 percent of the women were found pregnant. Usually, young homeless women leave home very early in life and are subject to various types of abuses, including disruption of education. Housing departments also obstruct the process of moving the pregnant women from hostels, often demanding court orders for the same. Homeless women in general, and pregnant young women in particular, have difficulty in accessing mainstream healthcare, social and support services. Women and poverty in the UK Much of women’s homelessness arise out of severe poverty. Women’s poverty is also generated by several factors. Although the Equal Pay Act has resulted in a rise in women’s pay, it is still below that of men with equal qualification. Women in general get less than two-third of men’s pay. Women comprise the majority of the low-wage workers in the UK that does not have a minimum wage legislation and the Wages Council is on the way out. Besides, women get employment for less hours than men and it has not increased since World War II. While half of women paid workers have part-time jobs, even full-time women workers have less number of working hours. Flexible work schedules have meant that men get more full-time work while women work part-time. There are more women who have to depend on State welfare and even here categories of women are discriminated against – for example, women who have male partners or by lower rates (Briar). Lack of disposable income often trap women in unhappy marriages and when thrown out of the home by domestic violence, they are unable to find housing for themselves. Women of ethnic communities are more likely to be unemployed and poor. For example, Black African, Pakistani and Bangladeshi women are on an average three times more poor than men. While 70 percent of all ethnic communities live in poor localities compared to 40 percent of the British, immigrant women living on work permit are not entitled for childcare benefits (WRC). Besides, as many as 1,000 women in England and Wales are forced to legal action for job loss due to pregnancy. The gender gap in pay in the UK is the highest in Europe, with women who work full-time earning 82 percent of the male average hourly pay while women who work part-time earn 59 percent of men in similar jobs. Ninety percent of teenage mothers receive social support but it is related to the age of the mother. Young pregnant homeless women have less to spend on food than that recommended by the Food Commission. Seventeen percent of working women cannot afford to pay insurance compared to 4 percent of men. As a result, 64 percent of pensioners are single women for whom the pension is the sole income. In London, women receive an average pension of GBP 58.14 while that of men is GBP 80.42. Single older people in the UK live in worse housing conditions and women comprise 78 percent of lone households (WRC). Poverty and poor housing is more acute among ethnic women. Among the Bangaldeshi families headed by women, 40 percent live in houses with more than one person per room, which is 20 times the national average. Forty percent of ethnic women live in perpetual fear of harassment and violent attacks (WRC). Sex Discrimination policies According to the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975, it is unlawful to discriminate either for or against women, men, married couples or transsexuals in matters of education, employment, pay, provision of goods and service, housing and advertisement. However, sex discrimination is not unlawful in the case of single people, charities, communal housing, insurance companies, private clubs or positive action (BBC, 2004). The Sex Discrimination Act was revised in 2005 to align itself with Equal Treatment Guidelines of the European Union. According to the Guideline, indirect discrimination is defined as “where an apparently neutral provision, criterion or practice would put persons of one sex at a particular disadvantage compared with persons of the other sex, unless that provision, criterion or practice is objectively justified by a legitimate aim, and the means of achieving that aim are appropriate and necessary”. In UK’s Sex Discrimination Act, indirect discrimination occurs when an individual or organization applies a provision, criterion or practice equally to all but puts one or more person’s sexual orientation at a particular disadvantage without proving that it is achieving any particular aim (DTI). Conclusion Women in the UK face various types of discrimination in the housing sector, mostly arising out of their adverse economic position. While married women in general face relatively less problems in housing (albeit women-headed ethnic families live in the most dilapidated housing with limited facilities and usually with little heating), the most suffering among women are the lone individuals, particularly those who have never married, and the victims of domestic violence. Nearly half of the lone mothers with dependent children live in social housing while a large number of young women are driven to homelessness because of various reasons – domestic violence, child abuse, lack of income and unstable family support being the most important among them. The most discriminatory factors in women’s lives that affect their housing, considered to be the most critical part of one’s life, are those related to employment. In the United Kingdom, there is no minimum wage legislation and women in general are paid less and get less work-hours than men. This affects women’s disposable income that in turn influences their accommodation and livelihood. Besides, the homeless women tend to get dependent on social welfare and are reluctant to take up employment since there is little chance of their being better off. Hence, after a woman gets acclimatized with life on the streets, she tends to remain there. Works Cited BBC Action Network, Sex Discrimination Act 1975, http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/A1185202 J Barlow, S Duncan, Success and failure in housing provision, Pergamon, 1994 Robert Gordon University (RGU), Introduction to Social Policy: Housing and Urban Policies, http://www2.rgu.ac.uk/publicpolicy/introduction/housing.htm D Gordon and C Pantazis, Breadline Britain in the 1990s, Avebury, 1997 Crisis, Statistics about Homelessness, March 2006, http://www.crisis.org.uk/pdf/HomelessStat.pdf Department of Trade and Investment (DTI), Equality and Diversity: Updating the Sex Discrimination Act, 2005, www.dti.gsi.gov.uk Crisis, Hidden Homelessness: Your place, not mine – The experience of homeless people staying with friends, www.crisis.org.uk/page.builder/researchbank.html Crisis, Living in Fear: Violence and Victimization in the Lives of Single Homeless People, 2005, www.crisis.org.uk/page.builder/researchbank.html Crisis, Homeless Young Women and Pregnancy: Pregnancy in hostels for single homeless people, 2000, www.crisis.org.uk/page.builder/researchbank.html Crisis, Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Experiences of homeless women, 1999, www.crisis.org.uk/page.builder/researchbank.html Briar, Celia, Women, poverty and the UBI: a review of British evidence, http://www.geocities.com/ubinz/CBriar1996.html Women’s Resource Center (WRC), Statistics about women in the UK, 2006, www.wrc.org.uk Government of UK, National Statistics, Housing: Focus on Gender, http://www.statistics.gov.uk/focuson/gender/ Read More