Social vs Capitalist Housing!

I packed my bags one nice weekend of Summer 2017 and leave Malaysia and all its glory, its surreal food, its good and its bad not knowing whether I will come back or not and went to Cardiff, United Kingdom.

Called it colonialism mindset or whatever but as someone who was born and raised outside of Europe, like many others, we always have had a great expectation and impression of the community, social empowerment and expectant wealth brought upon by economic growth of the region. I’m not a naïve guy so I was aware there is no place that is perfect in this flawed world. But I was more than surprise to see there was a high number or homeless people on the street of the city centre yet many empty houses just lined up, abandoned. Of course, there were people who lived on social benefits and some of these people are also on social housing. But with a lot of homeless people and surplus of abandoned social housing. I can’t help but thinking something was off.

Demand for social housing is closely linked to the state of economy. The better the economy, supposedly the lesser the demand. The idea was that the increase of social housing means the social benefits budget would go down and overall lift the entire economy of the lower class. Unfortunately, there is an increasing rate of people without social benefits who occupies these homes. What does it mean? Well simply put It means more and more people who weren’t even eligible (because they made more money than the maximum wages eligible) to stayed there now does. Such as the case in a viral news not so long ago involving PPR Taman Manggis in Penang. In some countries like the UK, the social housing comes under lifetime tenancy basis some social housing properties in London can even be inherited regardless of the social status or eligibility of the inheritors.

To make matters more interesting is the fact that it is actually legal for these social housing dwellers to buy a second home on the normal residential market, renting it up and still live in social housings paid entirely from the difference and profit made from renting the second house on the market. To some others, they would go to the length of committing fraud by renting out their very own social houses and still live on the streets as homeless such was the case, I saw first-hand when I was in Cardiff. Hey, being homeless on the streets begging on Christmas Night is better than being sober from drugs. Talk about being super savvy huh? These people will put the people featured in ‘Extreme Cheapskates’ to shame, well just by being shameless!

So that is why despite the government’s effort in building more and more social housing projects, at the rate of which is also highly criticised, the lack of firm monitoring and new enforcement is why there are a lot of homeless families that falls below poverty group. The most recent figures to date come from a study conducted in February 2016 by the Kuala Lumpur City Council (DBKL), which reports that the number of homeless people in the city range from 1,500-2,000 families that are homeless and many more dwells in squatters and slums silenced and masked over SOHO towers and Luxury Suites.

So in this dog eat dog world of Capitalism housing where what you think you can afford is far from true, or the almost too good to be true Socialist housing where art and innovation will come at a slower rate. Cant we find a middle ground where the grass will finally be greener under our feet?