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.

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