Keeping A Roof Over One's Head Analysis

What surprised me the most about this reading was that poorer families are having to pay more than the rich to get services such as water and utilities provided to them. This surprised me because the way I would have thought about the issue is having the rich pay more in order to alleviate some of the burden put on in the marginal areas of Latin America. In the chapter “Keeping a Roof over One 's Head: Improving Access to Safe and Decent Shelters” by Anna Wellenstein & Marianne Fay it gave the example that the poor people in San Salvador paid $72 and in contrast to the rich only paying $29 for water connection (p.100). My opinion is that if the rich is making more income compared to the poor they need to be paying more in terms of their living …show more content…
In an example from the article inequality is demonstrated through public housing by fostering favoritism and bribery which does not reach the very poor, instead housing is more favorable towards those who have the money to take care of financial aspect of renting and owning a home (Wellenstein & Fay, 2005, p.106). These inequalities in social and environmental factors are leading to poor health conditions such as diarrhea and acute respiratory infection being higher among the urban poor than the rural poor and infant mortality is about the same between urban and rural poor despite urban poor having access to health care (Welllenstein & Fay, 2005, p. 100). This says a lot because most of these conditions are a result of stress and living in poverty. The poor housing policies are a result of no real “legal or regulatory framework” as well as lack of vulnerability assessment and not enforcing rules on where housing can be adopted, cost, unreliable services and informal sectors (Wellenstein & Fay, 2005, p.115). All in all, these factors pose as a threat to those who are living in poverty and we see these impacts in the form of statistics when comparing data from around the