Access to housing. Homelessness and vulnerability in Europe

Book abstract:

Europe has 171 million housing units occupied by an estimated 377 million people - a little more than two persons per unit. So how come there are an estimated 3 million homeless persons and a further 18 million housed in inadequate accommodation? Some of the answers may lie in the way in which the European housing market is organised both in its public and private spheres. This book examines that market and makes a worthwhile contribution to our understanding of the problems.

Four themes dominate the work:

• The expansion of an increasingly unregulated private market
• The contraction of the state sector
• The (re-)emergence of voluntary organisations
• The role of vulnerable people themselves.

After a comprehensive introductory chapter the second chapter goes on to examine differences between the right to housing and access to housing. Vulnerable groups are often denied access to housing by the operation of the market itself and chapter three discusses and evaluates the European housing market. The changing role of the state and the part played by housing authorities and housing associations may impede access to housing of low-income groups and these issues are ventilated in chapter four. Those vulnerable persons who find no solution through the private or public market develop coping mechanisms within the sphere of civil society and these are the focus of chapter five. The European social agenda agreed at Nice in December 2000 and contingent objectives for improved social cohesion are considered in chapter six together with the differing approaches and strategies used to tackle housing exclusion in the EU Member States. The concluding chapter seven reviews the meaning of exclusion in the housing market, the failure of earlier policies and the persistence of homelessness, the way forward and lessons for good practice to be gleaned from the earlier chapters, and the challenges which face government and service providers in implementing good practice.

The work will be of interest to students, researchers and academics, policy makers and practitioners in the fields of housing, poverty and social exclusion.

Bill Edgar is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Town and Regional Planning, University of Dundee, and is Co-ordinator of research for the European Observatory on Homelessness.

Joe Doherty is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography and Geosciences, University of St Andrews and is Co-ordinator of research for the European Observatory on Homelessness.

Henk Meert is a Post-Doctoral Fellow of FWO Flanders and Associate Professor at the Institute for Social and Economic Geography at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.