Beth Watts Centre for Housing Policy University of York

European Research ConferenceAccess to Housing for Homeless People in Europe

York, 21st September 2012

Comparing Rights-based and Non Rights-based Approaches to Homelessness: A comparison of Scotland and the Republic of Ireland

Beth Watts

Centre for Housing Policy University of York

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Alternative approachesScotland – rights based 1977 UK-wide legislation established an

enforceable legal right to settled accommodation for ‘priority need’ homeless households

Discharge of duty mainly into social rented tenancy

Homelessness Task Force established in 1999-2002

Landmark legislation in 2001/2003 Phasing out of ‘priority need’ category by

2012 Scottish Executive received Human Rights

Award in recognition of these reforms

Ireland – social partnership Approach developed since the mid 1990s in

response to failure of 1988 Housing Act Homelessness Initiative (statutory/voluntary

partnership) established in 1996 to coordinate services across Dublin

Cross Departmental Team on Homelessness (1998-2000) consulted and published Homelessness – An integrated Strategy in 2000

Stakeholder negotiation and deliberation: a problem solving and consensual approach to ratchet up of standards

Homeless forums involving voluntary and statutory organizations to coordinate services

Sustained political will and significant investment (€53.4m in 2011)



Research questions

Do legal rights to housing for homeless households ameliorate the stigma that can be associated with accessing statutory services targeted at specific ‘needy’ groups?

Do legal rights to housing for homeless households mean that those in greatest need access suitable housing?



Method: Comparative qualitative research



Stigma RBA minimise stigma by casting homeless people as

‘rights bearers’ with entitlements rather than recipients of charity or state largesse.

Social rights create a uniform status of citizenship that binds members of a community together with a common identity (Marshall, 1950)

Universal versus selective rights: legal rights to housing are targeted, selective and conditional.

Selective approaches in liberal welfare regimes are stigmatising. Legalistic safety nets differentiate, assess and supervise welfare recipients (Bengtsson, 2001)



Stigma (Link and Phelan, 2001)

Conceptualisation based on the convergence or co-occurrence of six inter-related components Labelling StereotypingSeparationStatus LossDiscriminationA power situation



Stigma: Status LossEdinburgh Service Users“everybody’s entitled to help, it doesn’t matter if your poor or what country you come from, you’re always entitled to help, there’s help available if you need” (Edinburgh Service User, CC1) “Everybody in Britain has a right to accommodation, I mean we’re not living in a third world country, do you know what I mean? And… society is wrong where people sleep on the street, eh, yeah I think that everybody has a right to be housed, especially in a country that has the wealth…there’s a lot of wealth in Britain, so, I think it’s ridiculous that people are homeless.” (Edinburgh Service User, CC2)

Dublin Service Users“B: Do you feel that that’s help that you’re entitled to or just that you’ve being done a good turn, done a favour? A: No, um, I kind of feel well, they’re doing their job, you know? To the best of their ability and if they can help, they will. So they do what they can, when they can. If they don’t have the time, they’ll tell you, you know? So they’re good.” (Dublin Service User, BL4)

“B: looking back at the help you’ve had over the last few years, do you think that’s help you’re entitled to or do you feel that they were just doing you a favour…?A: I’m not special, so I don’t expect people to do this and do that… they’re very helpful people and they’re all experienced, in every individual case, they’ve seen it all before, but I’m not special, so it’s a kind of a balance, you have to put as much as you can in. You know? It’s fifty fifty.” (Dublin Service User, BL3)



Entitlement or gratitude?“People are often expected to be grateful when their needs are met; this is not the case when people’s rights are met. This reminds us not to campaign for ‘the needy’, but rather to support marginalized peple as equal human beings in their efforts to claim their rights and address the poverty, suffering and injustice in their lives” (Kenna, 2011, p572)

“a depressed sense of entitlement among members of low-status groups may prevent members of low-status groups from seeing when they are targets of discrimination (Major et al., 2002) and reduce the likelihood that they will engage in collective action to challenge the distribution of social goods (Crosby, 1982; Hafer & Olson, 1993). In this way, group differences in feelings of personal entitlement serve to perpetuate and maintain social inequality.” (Jost, Kay an Thurisdottir, 2009, p430)



Legitimate entitlement “What we’re finding now, even within the temporary accommodation, people will complain about the fact that there’s not a telly in the room, I prefer a microwave to a cooker, you know, there’s no breakfast being supplied, so it can set up additional challenges to a provider like the council in relation to meeting the needs of an individual, and then if we go in and say well actually we’re only statutorily obliged to provide you with this, if we get ourselves into that defensive position we’ve just lost everything we’ve tried to gain… What we’re trying to do is move ourselves away from that and deal with individual, and if they have issues then try and deal with them, but there are some unrealistic expectations there.”

(Edinburgh local informant)

“actually if there’s a view in other parts of Scotland that people [service users] are getting a bit more angsty, then fantastic!” (Scottish Key Informant 5)

“maybe, because it means people can’t be downtrodden and exploited, so from that point of view yes” (Scottish Key Informant 3)



Attitudes to Temporary Accommodation

Dublin Service Users

“Yeah, where I am here, is perfect.” (Dublin Service User, BL5)

“this is like excellent… you can play pool, and snooker and stuff like that, and that’s where people get together out there… So I’m here and I’m glad to be here…it’s a good place to get breathing space, yeah, yeah, so yeah. I can’t knock it really. Staff are great you know.” (Dublin Service User, BL2)

Edinburgh Service Users“It just feels like I’m in limbo, I can’t do anything, every day that goes past is just like a waste, cos I could’ve been doing something more constructive.” (Edinburgh Service User, CC3)

“B: So some people say when they’re in temporary accommodation it feels like life’s on hold. Does that sound right?

A: Well, I think that’s sorta it, it sortey does, or can, cos like I say I’m just champing at the bit, ready to go.” (Edinburgh Service User, CC5)



Access to settled housing - Vignette

A 24 year old man has been asked to leave by the friends he’s staying with. He has a history of drug use and mental health issues, has spent time in prison and exhausted friends and family as a source of accommodation.



ScotlandNeed to access settled housing prioritised: owed a full statutory duty to settled accommodation and likely to be allocated a social housing tenancy with support

“[there are a] range of issues there which are going to impact on his ability to find and sustain accommodation” (Edinburgh Local Informant)

“if somebody was in that situation, a single homeless male, or anyone else, however difficult it is for us backstage behind the scenes, they always get people what they need, we never turn people away, we never say sorry we can’t help you. And within that, whatever our case loads are like, we make absolutely every effort to re-house them” (Edinburgh local informant)

IrelandBalancing multiple objectives; access determined through discretion of housing managers and key workers

“The concern for us in allocations is, would he be capable of independent living? …we wouldn’t give a unit where we felt he wasn’t able to look after himself”

“he’s still young, he still wants to enjoy life, so he’s not stable”

“the [police] check everybody before we put them into standard social housing, and a lot of them because of their past would raise alarm bells … it’s a judgement call on the given manager to decide”

“If you were putting them into a high demand area and the residents are very active the manager has to say ‘no, I can’t take him… but I would consider him down the road where residents are not as active’.”

“a couple of specific areas in Dublin that have a disproportionately high level of social housing, so there are times then when the housing manager will say look, you need to pepper-pot it more around”



Gratitude for services

Personal responsibility / Individualistic

Social Injustice / Solidaristic

Entitlement to services

Unconditional rights

Unconditional assistanceDiscretionary assistance

Conditional rights

ScotlandScotland

Irish service usersIrelandIreland



SummaryOn the basis of this study, rights based approaches appear to: weakening the stigma of experiences of homelessness by casting service users as rights bearers with legitimate entitlements (countering status loss)

Altering the experience of being a homeless service user Driving up expectations about standards of support and temporary

accommodation Helping establish these demands as legitimate among service providers

Crowding out non-housing needs related considerations in gaining access to settled housing

Discretionary versus rule bound Blunt but effective



Conclusions: which system is ‘better’? Desert versus Need:

“merit of any sort should only be allowed to govern the distribution of a certain range of goods and services, and in particular not those goods and services that people regard as necessities” (Miller, 1996: 300)

Housing as foundational to human functioning: Doyal and Gough (1991); Nussbaum (1999); King (2003)

If a needs-based response to homelessness is sought, rights based approaches offer distinct advantages

Scotland: statutory system as blunt but effective tool Ireland: Balancing plural policy objectives, but inertia in homelessness services

Are ‘insiders’ those in the greatest housing need? Homelessness as one kind of housing need Housing need as a continuum (not as simple as homeless and non-homeless) These tensions are magnified in areas of housing stress and where social housing turnover

is low



Final thoughts A virtuous circle? The role of political

culture?

Scotland’s Rights Based Approach

Beth Watts Centre for Housing Policy University of York

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