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Mistreatment and misgovernment of the poor in developed countries.
Copyright 2006 Vincent Wilmot
Misgoverning the poor.
The poor in developed countries like the USA and UK, honest and
dishonest alike, are handled only by the non-street-wise middle
class who run government departments and other bodies - ensuring
that the poor are generally badly mistreated and misgoverned.
Of course the poor in developed countries are a minority so that
democratic political parties may easily see their votes as
unneccessary, yet the poor are a socially significant minority
whose misgovernment can seriously undermine society.
Mishousing the poor.
Often the poor are housed badly as when new social housing is
produced in areas of severe affordable housing shortage like
London, it is often produced in the form of very big estates
with hundreds or even thousands of rented homes - generally with
a view to hopefully making some scale cost savings, although
that does not always result. Such big social housing renting
estates easily incline to being tenanted badly and managed
badly. Like private slums (and they do tend to become social
housing slums over time), they often concentrate problem
households including criminals in excluded sub-societies. The
large numbers of children and youths brought together will tend
to forming gangs that may be a mere nuisance or become more
seriously criminal. Of course these problems are not confined
only to big estates, wherever there are concentrations of poor
families then children with little indoors will take to the
streets and form street-gang sub-cultures.
Developed countries' social exclusion policies, by government
and by social housing landlords and other bodies, will hence
often need to especially address areas housing large numbers of
low-income families. However, those expected to produce such
social inclusion policies will generally be educated
professionals with little or no experience of living in social
exclusion housing, and they may commonly have correct general
theories but often be missing the correct practical detail
needed. Consultation with less educated low-incomed renters
themselves is likely to help only to a limited extent, and those
dealing with social exclusion housing need to find the tiny
handful of street-wise affordable housing professionals who
somehow do happen to have substantial experience of themselves
living in and raising a family in such low-income housing.
The UK is now making some limited attempts to copy the equally
limited US Hope VI scheme to convert big bad estate areas to a
mix of the unemployed, low-income earners and the better-off.
But this sort of housing inclusion move needs other non-housing
inclusion policies to be also addressed at the same time or they
are doomed to failure. The poor will have some good ideas on
practical solutions, but poor housing areas are also likely to
have an occasional housing professional resident. It is
undoubtedly preferable if all big new housing developments are
tenanted more reasonably, as by including a mix of some
affordable rent units, some sale units and some market rent or
near market rent units. Existing big social housing renting
estates will often need to be made mixed tenure and often also
need to have the proportion of unemployed households reduced.
The management and policing of poor housing areas is often
inappropriate, basically taking them as no-go areas, and it also
often attracts inappropriate solutions. Some support heavy
police presence and/or continuous CCTV camera use, while others
oppose both police presence and CCTV cameras as 'police-state'
intrusion. But most tenants in such areas favour a practical
position of both being always available but with just sufficient
police presence when needed and with CCTV cameras to be used
only some of the time as needed. On both police and CCTV
cameras, the extremes of 100% and 0% are generally not
acceptable - the right balanced uses of both is what is wanted
and needed.
Tenants can easily feel stuck in a big bad poor housing estate,
especially bad for children, if there is a local shortage of
affordable housing as in London. A transfer request may get the
reply "in about 30 years time", and they may be unemployed
and/or unskilled. Realistic transfer alternatives really need to
be found in these circumstances. And a family with young
children having to , or deciding to, stay on a big poor housing
estate should be advised to try to avoid their children making
friends with other local children, as by not using the local
schools.
Miseducating the poor.
Governments tend to treating older children like adults for
school attendance, bad behaviour and crime - but treating them
completely as babies for state money. Older children will act
adult whatever governments want, and poor children often take
over the streets and most schools - and they increasingly teach
successfully a pro-crime anti-learning anti-government lifestyle
that will threaten democracy if not properly addressed soon.
Older children need a much more consistent set of policies from
governments, treating secondary school children more like adults
for everything and one MUST is some pay for school attendance -
if necessary taking it from other family welfare payouts. This
will most directly affect poor children especially, but will be
better for all.
The many unneccessary problems of the honest poor may also
include eg having only black-and-white TV with few channels -
for which the UK has a mandatory license fee and not buying that
brings criminal prosecution (for being poor and not dishonest ?)
- and even those having such license are still harassed 'as
possible-evaders of the dearer colour TV license'. And eg if the
honest poor's children have no passports because they are
expensive then they cannot accept an offer of a free foreign
holiday.
Policing of the poor is often unhelpful to them rearing their
children to become honest citizens, with a real need for police
to greatly increase catch-rates for the main crimes of their
young children - street vandalism and shoplifting. Even a big
improvement in one of those would be a great help. Of course
street vandalism needs many more police on the streets. And
shoplifting needs an extensive police-run shop CCTV system for
smaller stores. It is catching child crimes early that needs big
improvement, not necessarily jailing children or parents.
Attempts at inclusion of the poor.
Many non-street-wise middle-class professional 'experts' may
claim that poverty is fine for children as long as they have
love - but poverty and social exclusion always do some damage
and good government should try to help minimise it if possible.
But affluent country governments have been increasing legal
constraints and sticks to beat poor children and poor parents -
as towards making parents smacking their children illegal. It is
largely poor parents who smack their children for misbehaving
mostly over having no money to buy treats to reward good child
behaviour ?! Increasing sticks for poor parents on parenting,
looks like a plan to take away all their children and put them
in government 'care' - a disaster tried and failed before in
many countries ! But middle-class run governments just cannot
understand how to best deal with the poor.
In developed countries like the USA and UK, the poor and other
minorities may effectively be excluded from obtaining reasonable
work, education, or holidays etcetera or generally equal
opportunity and fair treatment - and at the extreme a society
may treat some minorities as social Lepers and/or social or
political Scapegoats. This sort of social exclusion harms those
concerned, and making them anti-social also harms all of society
greatly. But can middle-class run governments ever learn how to
best deal with the poor ? Increasing their oppression only fires
increasing backlashes, but democratic political parties in
affluent countries mostly continue to ignore these major issues.
If developed middle-class government cannot find a way to better
govern the poor and other minorities, then maybe modern
government needs less middle-class officials. Maybe a third of
politicians should not be elected, but instead be randomly
selected from elector lists - but can any middle-class
politician such a constitutional change that might cost them
their very profitable job ?
About the author:
Vincent Wilmot currently lives in Grimsby UK and has several
interesting websites including
http://www.social-exclusion-housing.com
Vincent Wilmot
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