Housing well-being (satisfaction)
Housing well-being (satisfaction) refers to the residents’ positive and negative views of the house, its ownership, state of maintenance, the needs of the occupants and the neighbourhood. When a house fails to meet the cultural standards or the family needs, satisfaction levels are believed to be lower and residents will move sooner. A strong correlation found in studies is satisfaction and house-ownership.
Therefore the assumption is that a house owner is more satisfied with his home than a renter. Another assumption that is made in the literature is that the elderly are likely to be more satisfied with their homes than the younger households, because the elderly have lower aspirations.
The literature does not state clearly whether a higher income relates to a higher satisfaction level. Higher aspirations could also lead to further wishes and more dissatisfaction, whereas someone with a low income can be most satisfied if for example their roof stops leaking – their overall wishes are more down-to-earth. Housing satisfaction is influenced not only by the actual house but also by social, behavioural, cultural and other societal-environmental systems. The house is therefore only one link in the many factors to determine the person’s relative satisfaction with their accommodation. Components that relate to housing satisfaction are, to name a few: age, marital status, family size, socio-economic status, education and employment, neighbourhood and social participation, length of residency in the house and housing physical characteristics.
Positive correlation between housing satisfaction and neighbourhood is often referred to in the literature, whether or not privacy is also important is strongly linked to cultural background of the community. Factors such as access to roads, transportation and other infrastructure also influence satisfaction rates. Four architectural characteristics (i.e., modernity, familiarity, sense of community, safety) emerged as predictors of housing satisfaction but their combined predictive power was overshadowed by that of neighbourhood satisfaction and obviously cultural background is of influence. In the literature and studies, housing satisfaction and well-being are both used, although satisfaction is a more appropriate and used term.
SHF and HOUSING SATISFACTION
The concept of housing satisfaction has been used as an evaluative measure to judge the success of housing developments. Furthermore, customer satisfaction surveys can be used as a promotion factor for public relation activities, to show that the organisation is concerned about the well-being and satisfaction of the people they work with. In the case of SHF it’s about people with a very low income who become house owners thanks to a microcredit mortgage. Housing satisfaction is often used as a key predictor of an individual’s perceptions of general ‘Quality of life”
Satisfaction measurement would have been a good indicator in evaluations for the SHF-built houses in La Paz, Bolivia and Argum Bay, Sri Lanka. Complaints about the house, or abandonment cannot be verified or measured because little is known about the original dwellings. In the case of Sri Lanka the homes were destroyed by the Tsunami therefore a comparison is impossible and the built homes, although emergency relief, were built as durable housing. In the case of La Paz the beneficiary group lived in slums – the built houses even though showing shortcomings are better than the original homes. It is therefore difficult to label the increase in satisfaction level. One inhabitant in La Paz was able to formulate the crux of Quality of Life– satisfaction and SHF’s vision on micro-credits for housing: “The house is very nice, but it will never really be my own home because we didn’t pay for it ourselves”
Methods of measurement:
Housing satisfaction in Bolivia was measured by use of quantitative data from the socio-economic study(2010) , i.e.: demographic data, Quality of life assesment, income and health status. Furthermore an adapted ‘Satisfaction level scale ” a blinded Likkert scale (0 to 10) with a smiley tool on a range of 5 possibilities was included in the survey to measure their perception of housing satisfaction.
Bolivia
By working together with the Bolivian families we strive to understand their way of living, vision of life and culture, in order to provide suitable answers to their real needs.
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