Homelessness: The Social Problem Approach
Srna Mandic
Faculty for Social Sciences,
University Ljubljana, Slovenia
Email : [email protected]
Paper to be presented at the ENHR Conference
July 2nd – 6th 2004, Cambridge, UK
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1. INTRODUCTION
'Traditionally, the homeless in the United States were the derelicts commonly
seen on the skid rows of central cities. During the mid-1980s this picture
changed dramatically ... The economically disadvantaged represent
approximately one-third, the mentally ill another one-third and alcohol and drug
abusers the remaining third.” (Fodor and Grossman 1988: 209, 210).
This description of homelessness well pictures and confronts the traditional
social profile of the homeless with the new one, which is related to the new,
contemporary generators of housing vulnerability. In Europe, however, things
are somewhat specific. In its Eastern part, under socialism, neither of these
two types of homeless existed prior to the ‘transition’; with ‘transition’, both
have emerged. However, the main issue to be discussed here is how this
problem was recognised in the EU and what were the main policy responses
to it.
Homelessness is among important issues that appeared in EU policy and
research agendas during last decade ( see, for instance, Boelhouwer 1993;
Avramov 1995 and 1999; Duffy 1998; Edgar, Doherty and Mina-Coull 1999;
Edgar, Doherty and Meert 2002).
Perhaps the ground-breaking work on the EU level was the one by
Avramov (1995). In her report, she 1) provided definitions of the forms of this
phenomenon, 2) estimated the number of homeless people in the EU and 3)
established the structural (social) and proximate (individual) determinants
of homelessness and housing exclusion. Three structural determinants of
homelessness were emphasised: 1) social-demographic processes,
particularly the increase in the number of households and the corresponding
decrease in the average household size; 2) housing supply which was not
able to meet these new needs and reflecting the policy shift towards
‘decreasing social housing, deregulating the market and reducing the cheap
housing supply’; 3) poverty, particularly the growing gap between the rich and
the poor, and other forms of social exclusion.
Homelessness was also related to other wider issues such as human dignity
and social cohesion (Duffy 1998), to social exclusion and empowerment
(Edgar, Doherty and Mina-Coull, 2000), housing paths (Clapham) ect..
However, another essential step forward in understanding homelessness
as a complex social phenomenon was the report by Edgar, Doherty and
Meert (2002). This report examines homelessness as an outcome of two
dimensions of the social context. Firstly, ‘of the way in which the European
housing market – both in its private and state spheres – embraces some
households and rejects others, producing and reproducing conditions of
housing vulnerability for significant sections of Europe’s population’; and
secondly, ‘of the way in which civil society is imbricated in the market /state
nexus and the role it plays in providing the locus of coping strategies for those
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unable to access housing through state or market channels’ (Edgar, Doherty
and Meert 2002:1). Furthermore, they establish a dynamic relation between
these two dimensions in terms of ‘pathways into and routs out of
homelessness within … the individual life course’.
In contrast to the early accounts on homelessness, they already take into
account the governments’ responses to homelessness and the changing
governments’ engagement in housing: a decrease in the direct provision of
housing and an increase in the activities that facilitate and enable other
providers of housing, such as local organisations, NGO’s and the private
sector, as well as the personal social networks.
Homelessness and housing vulnerability became recognised also by policy
makers and became a public policy issue in the EU (see for instance
European public policy concerning access to housing, BIPE, 2000; Edgar,
Doherty and Meert, 2002). However, the major break-through of
homelessness – into EU policy occurred within the strategy for eradication
of social exclusion, initiated by the Lisbon Summit, and further developed
into the programme of National Action Plans to fight poverty and social
exclusion. Among the aims of the programme is also to achieve ‘Access for
all to decent sanitary housing as well as basic services..’. Observers expect
an even greater concern for housing issues in the future EU policy (Kleinman
2002).
Still, the concern about the access to adequate housing also became a part
of some other international policy documents. These, however, are not really
binding and imply a lesser degree of governments commitment. For
instance, United Nation Istanbul Declaration on Human Settlements (1996)
implies, that the governments affirm ‘commitment to the full and progressive
realisation of the right to adequate housing as provided for in international
instruments’ (p.7). There is also the European Social Charter (revised in
1996), Article 31: “With a view to ensuring the effective exercise of the right
to housing, the Parties undertake to take measures designed: to promote
access to housing of an adequate standard; to prevent and reduce
homelessness with a view to its gradual elimination; to make the price of
housing accessible to those without adequate resources”.
In dealing with homelessness and housing vulnerability, governments in EU
countries have developed also new policy solutions, which recognise the
significant role of NGO’s and their networks not only in providing a variety of
services, but also in assessment and articulation of new needs (Edgar,
Doherty and Mina-Coull 1999).
However, homelessness in countries in transition was generally not much
debated issue among policy analysts, even though there is a wide literature
on housing reforms. In this paper homelessness in Central and East
European (CEE) countries is examined and two issues are raised. First,
the housing reforms are assessed in terms of their impact on structural
causes of homelessness; and secondly, the policy responses towards
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homelessness are analysed; here, the focus is on treatment of the issue of
homelessness in the early stages of the policy process, e.i. in problem
recognition and in inclusion into policy agenda. The ‘social problem
approach’ is used.
2. THE SOCIAL PROBLEM APPROACH
In contemporary social sciences , ‘the constructivist approach’ has been
increasingly applied to analysis of social phenomena and is bringing a new
focus. In contrast to the positivist view, which sees social phenomena as
facts per se and as given independently from the observer, it focuses on the
(discoursive) processes, through which social phenomena are constructed
and interpreted in their social context. A remarkable case of constructivist
approach to homelessness can already be found in the Jacobs, Kemeny and
Manzi’s (1999) article, where the changing definition of homelessness in
Britain over last 30 years is analysed and established as an outcome of
activities of actors in that particular social context.
While constructivist approach may be used for a wide range of social
phenomena, ‘the social problem’ approach is developed for examination of
those phenomena, that can be considered ‘social problems’. An operational
definition of ‘a social problem’ is provided by Jamrozik and Nocella (1998:
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‘to be appropriately regarded as social problems, social phenomena or conditions
must therefore have three identifiable minimum features: first, the condition must
have an identifiable social origin; second, the condition must constitute a threat or
be perceived to constitute a threat to certain values or interests; and third, the
condition must be amenable to removal or at least attenuation or solution. These
three features may not always be immediately and clearly ‘visible’ in a condition, but
can be revealed through appropriate sociological analysis’.
Even though this definition may seem to simplify or even ‘over-simplify’
things, its application opens up actually a whole array of complex
questions to be analysed. As Jamrozik and Nocella (1998:5) warn, ‘by
examining the kind of phenomena to which societies react or feel compelled
to react, or do not react and do not feel compelled to react, the societies’
manifest as well as underlying values and dominant interest are revealed’.
When ‘the social problem’ is examined in the ‘policy cycle’ framework, as in
Parsons’ (1995) approach to public policy analysis, the central question
becomes, how a problem is – or is not – processed through different stages
of policy process: from the problem recognition and definition to agenda
setting, formulation of a policy to intervene and its implementation. However,
problem recognition and definition are ‘early’ stages in the policy process;
they and important for how the problem would be subsequently treated
throughout the policy process, particularly whether it becomes –or does not
become – an item on the policy agenda.
‘The genesis of a policy involves the recognition of a problem. What counts as a
problem and how a problem is defined depends upon the ways in which policy
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makers seek to address an issue or an event….A problem has to be defined,
structured, located within certain boundaries and be given a name. How this process
happens proves crucial for the way in which policy is addressed to a given problem
(Parsons 1995:87-88).
Parsons also presents different theoretical approaches that explain the
course that a problem may have in the early- stages of policy process.
Thus, the definition of problems and setting of policy agenda may be
explained as an outcome, among others, of: the process of competition
between different groups (pluralist approach); the ability to manage (or
expand) the conflict; mechanisms to filter out or exclude from the system the
excessive or unacceptable demands (Easton’s gate-keepers); a dimension
which is not empirically observable and is maintained trough systems of
beliefs, values, assumptions and ideologies (deep-theorist).
Parsons also points out the essential role of the ‘non-decisive’ power; it is
the power to avoid making decisions for changes; here, the concern is in
producing ‘non-issues’ and ‘non-events’. An excellent example of such
power can be found in Crenson’s (1971, in Parsons, 1995:139) study of the
issue of pollution in USA cities. In a notoriously polluted town of Gary,
Indiana, he found no concern about the pollution in the city policy; ‘the reason
for this non-issue status of pollution in Gary was that it was a city dominated
by the big poluter, US Steel’, who kept the issue off the agenda.
There is a gigantic body literature on the public policy analysis and it
provides more than an extensive selection of analytical topics, tools and
approaches on the subject. However, in this paper only a simple issue about
homelessness in Central and Easter European countries is examined: how
has this issue been recognised and positioned to the policy agenda during
the period of transition. Or was it closer to being a ‘non-issue’?
3. THE STRUCTURAL VIEW: BETWEEN DIMINISHING
HOUSING RESOURCES AND DEMOGRAPHY
CEE countries started their structural housing reforms during the period of
‘transition’, which involved complex development of new arrangements of
market economy and of political democracy. These housing reforms have
been already widely discussed (see Turner, Hegedus and Tosics 1992;
Clapham, Hegedus, Kintrea and Tosics 1996; Struyk 1996; Hegedus, Mayo
and Tosics, 1996; Priemus and Mandic 2000; Tsenkova 2000) . Here I will
focus only on some common features of these changes. The main issue is
the impact of housing reforms on the structural framework of homelessness
in these countries. Have these reforms created better conditions to alleviate
housing shortages and homelessness?
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Availability of housing resources and their inter-generational
redistribution
In late 1980’s, prior to transition, there were still considerable housing
shortages and overcrowding in CEE, as a contrast to the West European
countries at the time (Tosics 1987). Multiple occupancy and long waiting
lists for rentals were common and according to Szelenyi (1983), permanent
shortages of rented accommodation was a constant feature of ‘housing under
state socialism’.
After first half of the 1990’s, the period of transition and of comprehensive
housing reforms, general availability of housing did not improve. Quite the
opposite, investments into housing and the housing production sharply
decreased, as well as the general affordability of housing (Hegedus, Mayo
and Tosics, 1996; Struyk ,1996). According to Struyk (1996), this was a
consequence of the role, that housing played in the wider economic changes
of the time; namely, it was the ‘shock-absorber’, ‘absorbing the massive cuts
in national government’s budgets’.
However, it was the public rented stock that suffered the major reduction.
With privatisation, based on the ‘right-to-buy’ of tenants, it’s share in the total
housing stock rapidly decreased. The average in 12 CEE countries changed
from 27 percent in 1991, to 19 percent in 1994 (Hegedus, Mayo and Tosics,
1996:15). In one group of countries, consisting of Czech Republic, Poland
and Slovakia, the decrease was mild. In the remaining group, the decrease
was drastic and the remaining public rented stock came to comprise mostly
bellow 10 percent; in Slovenia, it changed from 33 percent to 9 percent and
was among the steepest (for further details see Priemus and Mandic 2000)
Privatisation has certainly improved housing opportunities of those
households, who managed to buy their homes at very favourable prices
and has lead, at least in Slovenia, to a high mobility rate in the following year
(Mandic, 2001). Yet at the same time and for the same reason, housing
opportunities of other groups, particularly those vulnerable, waiting to be
housed have worsened because of the less available rented accommodation.
However, negative impacts of privatisation on general housing availability can
be seen particularly in a longer term perspective. This implies intergenerational redistribution of housing resources; such redistribution presents
some cohorts with historically unique opportunity to collect the accumulated
public resources, as in the case of tenants ‘right-to-buy’ of rented housing,
and leaves the following cohorts with less opportunities even for renting.
Such a long term effect of housing finance changes was first pointed out by
demographers, not specifically for countries in transition. Kendig (1990:152)
thus argued that 'when Australia and Britain cut back on their investment in
public housing, they disadvantage low-income households for decades to come,
in order to benefit current taxpayers'.
Yet another consideration of the long term effects of these changes is about
the maturity of the public rented stock as a valuable social asset. Maturity
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implies that most of the housing stock become debt-free or low-debt; under
such conditions, pooling and cross-subsidisation allows rents to be significantly
lower than in case of an immature rental stock that is burdened by high deptservicing costs. This quality of large and age-balanced rental stocks of Central
and East European countries was first pointed out by Jim Kemeny. He was
highly critical about the lost opportunity to turn it into a cost rental stock: 'It takes
many decades to build up a reasonably mature cost rental housing stock, but
only a few years to fritter away the maturations gains by selling them off at what
amount to virtual give-away prices' (Kemeny, 1995;148). According to him,
what matters is not only the lost opportunity of a better use of this great asset
available in Eastern European countries, but also a high cost - in time and
money - of building up new rental stocks.
In Slovenia, privatization had a fairly strong popular support and the
conversion debate was actually a ‘conversion campaign’, while expectations
were quite ambiguous (for a detailed account, see Mandic 1994). At the same
time there was the expectations were it had been often argued prior to 1991
that privatization of the social rented housing was needed to unleash (defroze) the social capital that was invested there. Indeed, privatization
managed to ‘free’ this ‘tied’ capital and generate capital flows. However, it
was not for the sake of the housing sector and its development, but for
whatever the sellers chose, their interest ranging from higher industrial
wages by enterprises or renovation of catholic churches by municipalities.
The housing sector turned out to be the looser and subject to a massive outflow of capital, with very few arrangements to re-channel it to back the
housing sphere. While the bulk of the purchase money was generated as
early as 1992, the new housing policy was not implemented until five years
later. The opportunity to direct the capital flows into new housing policy
arrangements was thus lost, and the consequence was a lack of financial
sources to fuel the new housing policy during the transitional decade. Thus,
by lagging behind in implementation of new arrangements and particularly
safety-net provisions, the most vulnerable groups were victimized.
As a conclusion, availability of housing, particularly of non-profit rented
accommodation, was affected by transition and the vulnerable groups in
housing were among the ‘losers’ of the transition. The transitional decade
has added to the structural problems and to causes of homelessness and
housing vulnerability. Not only did the hidden forms of homelessness persist
and possibly increase, but became accompanied by an overt form of
homelessness that was previously unknown under socialism – such as
sleeping in public places. Also a new form of housing opened up in the
private rented sector. It became legalised, but still to a great extent unregulated and without much tenant protection, thus creating new forms of
housing vulnerability.
New social risks and demographic trends
The end of socialism has brought new economic freedoms as well as new
risks. Stable employment and wages and a variety of welfare services are
not guarantied anymore. People are exposed to new economic risks,
including unemployment. This affects households' ability to enter and
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sustain home-ownership. Servicing loan-repayments and costs of
maintenance and modernisation of home-owners is an obligation difficult to
meet for low-incomes households, let aside the cases of unemployment or
other social vulnerabilities. The lack of access to moderate rental
accommodation severely adds to a threat that ‘un-successful’ homeowners
should become homeless.
There are also demographic trends, that are occurring and that further
accentuate the problem of decreasing rental accommodation. Housing
demography clearly demonstrates how households at different life-cycle
stages tend to have different housing needs and tenures. Even in U. S. where
renting is particularly rare, high incidence of rental tenure is reported among
younger households, single households and single parent households, while
the major base of home-ownership is the classical family household,
consisting of husband, wife and children (Sweet 1990). Further growth of
these non-family households may be expected since it is reported as a
general demographic trend, connected to the decreasing size of households
and increasing in their number. Thus, an over-reduced rental housing stock
may seriously affect housing chances of a growing number of non-family
households. Additionally, it may also restrict incidence of demographic events
such as new household formation. In Central and East European region "low
and falling rates of household formation" are already found (Hegedus, Mayo
and Tosics, 1996).
4. VULNERABLE IN THE POLICY ARENA
‘.. structural transformations of economic systems are a plunge into the unknown;
they are driven by desperation and hope, not by reliable blueprints. For political
reasons, the reform strategy most likely to be undertaken is not the one that
minimises social costs. It is the bitter-pill strategy that combines a turn toward
markets with transformations of property'. Adam Przeworski: Democracy and the
Market, 1991, p.189
The previous section examined the changes in housing in CEE countries and
has shown that many new structural sources of housing vulnerability and
homelesness were created during the transitional period. The following
section observes how the political sphere responded to these trends. Were
the problems of housing vulnerability and homelessness recognised, did they
enter policy arena and how were they articulated?
Shelter issues superseded by property allocation issues
In this section, the perceptions of housing and of housing problems will be
observed. The profound and complex changes of the housing sector during
transition would not have been possible without a change in the social
meaning of housing across these societies.
The meaning of housing can be observed in terms of the Smith’s concept of
housing functions. Smith (1971) distinguishes four functions of housing:
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shelter, privacy, location, and investment. In his concept, there is a hierarchy
between these functions; thus, only after the first function of housing is met –
i.e. shelter, an individual turns to others. Investment function gets to the
forefront of priorities only after shelter, privacy and location needs have been
met.
The change, that happened during transition, may be described as a shifting
emphasis from the shelter to the investment function of housing. Under
socialism, housing was perceived mostly as a resource for satisfaction of
housing needs; in policy dictum, housing was a residential facility to which
everyone was entitled and everyone would eventually get housed. However
during the transition, this understanding of housing was to a large degree
superseded by the notion of housing as an equity (an asset), which qualifies
it’s owner to economic rewards and constitutes his wealth.
At the macro social level, this shift was manifested in public policy
formulation and agenda setting. Namely, two policies dominated policy arena
and debates in the sphere of housing: privatisation of rented housing and in
some countries (Czech republic, Slovenia, Poland, Bulgaria, Latvia and
Lithuania, but not in Hungary) the restitution (returning assets to the pre-war
original private owner or their heirs). These property-centred public policies
treated housing predominately as property and served a massive reallocation of wealth. They inaugurated the questions of wealth allocation (i.e.
‘when and how who gets what’) as the key political issue during early
1990’s.
The dominance of allocational issues over others was additionally fuelled by
‘social justice’ consideration. Thurow (1996:55) noted, that in Eastern
Europe, ‘the privatisation has too often been basically a process of
spontaneous self-combustion whereby the strong (usually the old Communist)
simply grab what used to be state assets for themselves… The wealthy are
not those who can organize new production but those who are best at seizing
property that used to belong to the state’.
In Slovenia, the outcomes of property re-allocation in housing came to be
perceived as unjust and disputed in a variety of perspectives and by variety
of groups. In other words, it created a set of new cleavages and lead a
number of groups to perceive themselves relatively deprived in comparison to
others.
Firstly, the housing privatisation outcomes. The undisputed beneficiaries of
privatisation – i.e. ex-tenants who bought their units - have in public opinion
increasingly gained an image of privileged persons, who were given a
uniquely favourable opportunity to become owners, while the rest of the
population had and still have to earn it much harder. On the other side, the
tenants who didn’t manage to buy their units, particularly because of the
restitution, came to symbolise a victim of the new, recently created injustices.
Paradoxically, thus, allocative outcomes of both groups are recently perceived
as unjust.
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Secondly, the outcomes of the restitution, one of the most disputed recent
issues in Slovenia. Paradoxically, it was precisely the social justice
argument that pave the road for the restitution policy. Early in 90’s a notion
started to prevail that the early post-war expropriation of some of the private
real-estate property had been unjust and that original owners (or their heirs)
are entitled to reparation. The expropriated housing had been mostly the
housing that exceeded the personal use of the private owners, much of the
property constituted multi-dwelling (tenement houses) with rental dwellings.
Claimants could choose the form of the restitution and the great majority
opted for the restitution in kind. Thus, the situation emerged, where the
former owner’s right to be restituted defeated the tenant’s right to buy and
in some cases even tenants right to use the housing unit.
However, housing privatisation and especially the restitution had triggered
a massive (re-)allocation of wealth and significantly added to what Lester
Thurow (1996:274) describes as ‘the initial distribution of the purchasing
power’ with which ‘to start to play the capitalistic game’. Without privatization
and even more without restitution, in some CEE countries the capitalistic
game would have had somewhat different start. Moreover, it was precisely
the sphere of real-property which in many instances as a generator of instant
wealth (private property).
This had a significant spill over effect on other public policies, which were
related to real-property issues such as property tax, land and urban
development. These policies remain extremely weak or even unarticulated,
allowing thus the first-round winners to multiply their wealth without being
subject to proper taxes (property tax, betterment tax etc.) and to sufficient
enforcement of urban planning regulations.
To conclude, the investment function of housing has thus gained
significance during transitional period, the main vehicle for this change were
the two property-centered policies – housing privatization and restitution.
They were formulated mainly to solve wealth allocation issues (‘who gets what
property under what conditions’), while the housing policy and the welfare
outcomes were sacrificed to a significant degree. Shelter issues remained un
recognised and policies to tackle affordability problems or homelessness
delayed for years. Namely, as late as 1996, Slovenian ombudsman clearly
negated existence of any right to adequate housing: ‘With continuing forced
evictions new conflicts can be expected. Individuals and the state are not
ready for new circumstances. Many still rely on the state to support them with
housing or refer to ‘the right to housing’. Such mentality is manifested in
numerous initiatives, contrary to the fact, that constitutionally the state is
responsible only to create conditions enabling the citizens to procure
adequate housing on their own’ (Varuh človekovih pravic 1996:143).
Insufficient policy measures to address the housing needs of
the vulnerable
During the period of transition, housing policies and their measures were
dramatically changed. Housing reforms generally started with significant
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reduction and even cuts in most of the previous subsidies to the housing
sphere (dissolvment of the previous system), and many of previousely
working policy measures were abolished, while the introduction of the new
measures was much slower, particularly in building new safety-net
provisions.
A wider and a more diversified set of measures can allow better targeting and
better achievement of the economic and social policy goals in housing, and a
wider range of more specific needs of vulnerable groups may be recognised
and met. Additionally, by public measure support third sector providers can
be enabled to provide a large range of service for vulnerable groups.
The survey carried out by the Council of Europe (Tosics and Edrosi, 2000)
analysed the measures that countries in transition have adopted to assist the
vulnerable population in their access to housing and compared them to EU
countries. They distinguished policy measures between those, aimed directly
at vulnerable groups and those, that are directed to providers of services
for the vulnerable groups.
The accession countries were found to dispose with significantly less policy
measures than the EU countries: for the first type of policy measures, the
average in applicant countries was 2,4 against 3,5 in EU; for the second type
of measures, the figures were 0,91 and 1,85 respectively. In comparison to
EU countries this group of countries seem to be particularly slow in
developing the provider oriented type of measures. Similar patterns were
also reported in figures about the NGOs’ engagement in provision of
services for the vulnerable population. The average number of such services
significantly vary across groups of countries - from over 4.25 among EU
countries, to a little over 2,18 in applicant countries.
The results indicate a considerable lagging behind of the CEE countries in
the ability of their governments to address the housing needs of the
vulnerable groups and consequently also to recognise these needs.
Recognising the problem?
In this section, the question is raised, to what extent was the problem of
homelessness recognized by policy makers in CEE countires.
It was established earlier in the text that in transition countries significant new
generators of housing vulnerability were created and, at the same time
relatively weak policy means to tackle them. In such circumstance and
relying on common sense, one would expect homelessness to be a burning
problem and much debated issue. But not in the policy. As found by a
survey (Tosics and Erdosi, 2000: 32), quite the contrary was the case.
Confronted with larger problems and lesser means, the CEE countries,
according to the ministerial answers, turned out to be less ready to
recognize and confront the problem than more developed European
countries. Namely, the claims to have ‘the right to housing’ existing in their
country, were the following: 33% among EU countries, 50% among
applicant countries and 100% among other East European countries. Thus,
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where the problems were greatest (such as with countries victimized by war
damages), the readiness to acknowledge and recognize these problems
were the smallest.
However, it is quite different in the national, and even more in the local
policy context, where policy officials are confronted with housing
vulnerability and find it more difficult to escape the pressure of the groups in
need. Perhaps it is the local level that is much more responsive to such
problems and tend to find solutions. In Slovenia, for instance, shelters for
homeless and emergency housing were first implemented by Ljubljana local
authorities and only after that also recognized by the national level.
However, the development of issue of homelessness and its entry to policy
agendas still remains to be seen and analysed in future. For accession
countries, the acceptance of the Nap/incl should perhaps accelerate the
entry of housing vulnerability into policy arena and into policy rhetoric .
5. CONCLUSIONS
The paper observes how the transition countries have treated the issue of
homelessness in their public policy formulation. The focus was on the early
stages of policy formation – on definition and placing of the problem on the
policy agenda.
I have tried to document how the transitional period has strengthened the
structural causes of housing vulnerability and homelessness. It was also
pointed out how polices dealing with housing were dominated by other
issues. Further, it was indicated how housing policies, particularly their
safety-net provisions, were impoverished and their development in delay.
Governments increasingly tended to rely on the emerging housing market
mechanisms, while the measures to regulate them are still in delay.
Yet at the same time a variety of new social risks emerged such as
unemployment, poverty and housing vulnerability in the free housing market,
not yet properly regulated to protect the consumer side. Under such
circumstances a growing part of the population is exposed to housing
vulnerability and even homelessness as it’s extreme form.
The fact, that in many transition countries the homelessness did not manage
to get to the policy agenda for almost a decade, has been often interpreted
as a matter of urgent economic issues, while welfare issues need to be
delayed. For instance, in analysis of housing reforms in CEE countries, the
World Bank experts distinguished the reform tasks in two phases; only
after the first phase tasks are concluded (dissolvement of elements of the old
system, cut of subsidies and privatisation), the second phase ( building
social-safety net provisions) may be expected (Hegedus, Mayo, Tosics
1996). In contrast to this approach that interprets a decade long suffering of
vulnerable groups merely as a technical, neutral sequencing of reform
tasks, others (see Przeworski 1991, Stark and Bruszt 1998) understand this
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as the ‘social cost of transition’. In housing, its dissproportionally large share
was passed to the vulnerable groups.
Yet it seems it is not only the lack of policy budgetary resources and
instruments, that needs to be overcome, but also the ‘democratic deficit’. It
is about keeping the vulnerable groups and their advocates away from the
policy arena; without possibility to articulate their needs and interest in the
policy arena, homelessness remains a ‘non-issue’. Here, the important role
in detecting a problem and bringing it into policy arena is the one of the
NGO’s.
In explanation of the difference between EU and CEE countries in how they
bring the homelessness to the policy agenda, also the underlying general
premises of the social policy rhetoric might be of importance. In EU, the EU,
the policies are becoming increasingly ‘inclusionary oriented’. In the CEE
countries, the debates tend to have much more ‘exclusionary’ dictum, which to
a great extent replaced the previous ‘universalist’ principle. With such
‘exclusionary’ orientation of a public policy, the focus is on the ‘criteria of
eligibility’; the debates in policy arena are fixated on creating and enforcing the
barriers and borders, that includes one group, and excludes the other, avoiding
democratic deliberations of wider policy issues. Again, the role of NGO’s and
their networking is significant.
6. REFERENCES
Avramov, D. (1995) Homelessness in the European Union. Bruselj:
FEANTSA.
Boelhouwer, P. (1993) Housing Systems in Europe – A Research Project.
Scandinavian Housing & Planning Research, 10, 1: 37-42.
Clapham, D., Hegedus, J., Kintrea, K. and Tosics, I. (Eds) (1996) Housing
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