As Hong Kong stepping in to an aging society, Housing specially designed to fit the needs for the older people become imminent. Meanwhile, whom do the older persons live with is another important issue since older persons requires more attention in their daily life. In this paper, we are going to explore the housing arrangements given by the government in order to fulfill the housing needs of the older persons and on the other hand, to see investigate the living arrangements of the older persons.
Theoretical Framework.
In this paper, we are trying to imply the Social Exchange Theory to explain the housing arrangements given by the government. The Social Exchange theory, according to the explanation of Hooyman and Kiyak (1998), is about give and take. The Older persons will have to provide some merits to the society or the family in order to obtain the care they needed. In this essay, we are tying to explain that the older person contributed to the society during their young age and now it is time for the government to provide the benefits for them. This is the reason why the government is providing special housing arrangements the older persons in need.
Housing and Living Arrangements for Older People in Hong Kong.
Current older people housing arrangements provided by the government can be categorized into three sections: Public Housing Scheme, Housing for Senior Citizens (HSC) scheme and institutional care provided by government or private sector. For the living arrangements, the most common form of living arrangements of older persons are living alone, with offspring, with spouse, with friends and with strangers. In order to have a better focus, we will only analysis Public Housing Scheme and Housing for Senior Citizens Scheme for discussion; moreover, the living arrangements will be combined into the housing arrangements for analysis since the two components are closely related.
