Local social aids to mitigate urban poverty: A case study for Kocaeli Metropolitan Municipality

Poverty mitigation strategies have been generally adopted and tried to develop by central and local authorities in the name of better living conditions for people. The proximity of services to the public, providing faster and more efficiently, and in the implementation of these policies, the effectiveness of local governments has increased even more, and municipalities and metropolitan municipalities have been highlighted in local governments. In metropolitan cities, the most basic method of struggle for municipalities and metropolitan municipalities as local government units against increasing different social poverty types has been social reliefs, which have become varied with growing poverty in practice. In this study, the social reliefs applied by Kocaeli Metropolitan Municipality, which is a local government unit between 2010 and 2015 has been examined in detail. A comprehensive research related with the awareness of Kocaeli Metropolitan Municipality's aid, whether or not the aid is addictive, the satisfaction level of the aid, the determination of the basic necessities, the needs of the aids and the effect of the aid on reducing the urban poverty has been conducted with questionnaire study in the central district of Kocaeli province, Izmit, is generally located in neighborhood areas where the lower income population lives. In the first part of the research, literature review was conducted and the conceptual framework of urban poverty and social reliefs was addressed; in the second part, the development process of local social reliefs and information on social reliefs implemented by local governments are given. In the third and last part of the study, the social benefits of the Kocaeli Metropolitan Municipality between 2010 and 2015 were examined periodically and the data of the applied survey was analyzed. In this questionnaire survey conducted by 352 people in Izmit county with only one person (usually father or mother) in each family, it was found that 85% of the aid recipients meet the needs of the aid provided, the 96% of the basic necessities needed as nutrition and 95% of the sheltering, and 62% of the respondents stated that the social reliefs provided by the Kocaeli Metropolitan Municipality reduced urban poverty.