Assessment of tenant satisfaction with public housing in Johor Bahru

Malaysian government had embarked upon several efforts to provide quality and affordable housing for every citizen. Rental Public Housing Programmes are one of the government initiatives to overcome affordable housing issues. Rental housing provided at nominal rent to the needy and are publicly funded and administered for low income families. Renting is essentially an urban tenure due to a massive waves of people moved to the cities. However, development of high rise housing in urban area for the low income people are facing problems such as housing maintenance, management and anti-social behaviors, thus need to be addressed by the government. It is therefore importance to incorporate the aspect of quality residential environment towards the affordable housing occupants. This research attempts to identify the components of residential environment and examine the relationship between resident satisfactions with residential environment. The first objective was achieved through literature review. The primary data was analysed using frequency analysis, descriptive analysis, cross-tabulation analysis and Pearson chi-square tests to achieve the second objective. It is conducted through a five-point likert scale questionnaire with a sample of 210 Rumah Iskandar respondents.The findings shows that the residents are satisfied with 38 components of the residential environment. However, there are three components recorded as dissatisfied which are firefighting system, public phone and distance to hospital. The results suggest that government and policy makers should incorporate the element of resident satisfaction in the public housing policy. This is to ensure the occupants are satisfied with the public houses supplied by the government.