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Rights, Stigma and Homelessness: A comparison of homelessness policy in Scotland and Ireland. Beth Watts Centre for Housing Policy, University of York Email bw577@york.ac.uk Introduction Scotland and the Republic of Ireland have pursued markedly different approaches to homelessness in the last 15 years. Legislative reforms in the early 2000s in effect established an individually enforceable legal right to housing for virtually all homeless households in Scotland. In contrast to this ‘rights-based approach’, since the mid 1990s Ireland has pursued a ‘social partnership’ approach to homelessness, seeking to end long-term homelessness by “achieving a shared understanding of the issue and working through a process of deliberative democracy to achieve the desired outcomes” with key partners (O’Sullivan, 2012). These two approaches fall at either end of the spectrum of state responses to homelessness described by Anderson (2012), between harder legalistic policy approaches and ‘softer’ policy instruments that encourage or enable local level action. Scotland’s rights-based approach to homelessness has been internationally lauded as progressive, inclusive and ground-breaking (Pawson, 2008; Anderson, 2012) and as an example of the rights-based responses to homelessness which should be pursued more widely. FEANTSA (The European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless) for example, has a longstanding commitment to ‘a rights-based approach to tackling homelessness’ (FEANTSA, 2008, p.1). Despite this emerging consensus and the intuitive appeal of rights-based approaches as offering “radical and relatively immediate solutions” to homelessness (O’Sullivan, 2008), there remains ambiguity around exactly what constitutes a rights-based approach to homelessness. A number of European countries (Belgium, Finland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden) articulate a programmatic or aspirational ‘right’ (Mabbett, 2005) to housing in their national constitution, but do not provide legal mechanisms to enforce these rights for individuals (Fitzpatrick and Watts, 2010). In Scotland where there is no such constitutional statement of rights to housing, specific homelessness legislation provides a clearly defined and individually enforceable legal right to housing for homeless households. In addition to this ambiguity, there is a paucity of empirical evidence that rights-based approaches of any kind do in practice achieve significantly better outcomes than non-rights-based approaches (Fitzpatrick and Watts, 2010). Taking Scotland’s approach to homelessness as a starting point and Ireland’s ‘social partnership’ approach as a comparator, this paper considers whether or not individually enforceable legal rights to housing for homeless households secure the better outcomes for those in housing need that advocates of this approach claim. The paper begins by giving an account of the comparative qualitative research

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method used in the study. This is followed by a discussion of the evolution of current approaches to homelessness in Scotland and Ireland. The discussion of findings from the study that follows focuses on two questions:

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

Do legal rights-based approaches better meet the needs of homeless households than alternative approaches?

A conceptual framework within which the impact of rights-based policies on understandings and experiences of homelessness is then presented. On the balance of evidence presented here, it would appear that rights-based approaches offer significant advantages over non-rights-based approaches in terms of their impact on stigma and meeting the needs of homeless households, although further questions remain around certain risks of ‘legalistic’ approaches. The study The fieldwork for this research, summarised in table 1, was conducted in Scotland and Ireland during 2011. A first phase of fieldwork involved national key informant interviews with policy makers and civil servants, voluntary sector leaders and academics. These participants were purposively selected to include a range of perspectives from the homelessness and social housing sectors. Topics covered in these interviews included the perceived rationale of the national policy framework; perceptions of its efficacy and outcomes, as well as the drawbacks and trade-offs associated with the approach. Key informants were also asked to consider which cities or areas they felt would offer good case studies for the second phase of the study. Figure 1 Summary of fieldwork Scotland Republic of Ireland

Phase 1 National key informants

Policy makers (3) Voluntary sector (5) Academics (2) Total 10

Policy makers (5) Voluntary sector (4) Academics (4) Total 13

Phase 2 Local case studies Edinburgh Dublin

Local informants Local authority staff (7) Voluntary sector (2)

Local authority staff (7) Voluntary sector (2)

Single homeless men In temporary accommodation (8) Resettled (3) Total 11

In temporary accommodation (11) Resettled (4) Total 15

Edinburgh and Dublin were selected as local case studies. Focusing on only two areas offered the opportunity to conduct more in depth fieldwork and these two cities were considered an expedient choice because they had sufficient levels of homelessness to give an insight into the implementation of national policy; because national informants considered them to be ‘exemplars’ of the countries’ national homelessness policy; and for pragmatic reasons (travel time and costs). Efforts to tackle homelessness in Ireland were initially focused in Dublin and remain most

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advanced there and Edinburgh offered a good comparison as both a large city and as a local authority that has performed well in inspections considering homeless services and housing management (Communities Scotland, 2006). In each city, interviews were conducted with local informants from the statutory and voluntary sector at strategic and operational levels. These interviews explored perspectives on implementing homelessness policy in addition to reflections on the advantages and disadvantages of the policy approach. Hypothetical vignettes of ‘typical’ homeless households were used to explore how service providers approach homeless households in various circumstances and to compare the support available to such households in each country. Vignettes can be particularly helpful in comparative research as they offer the opportunity to uncouple the perspectives of service providers from their institutional context, cutting through the complexity of programme and organisational structures (e.g. Hughes and Huby, 2004; Quilgars et al, 2009, p24; Mangen, 1999, p119). Lastly, interviews were undertaken with single men either currently homeless and residing in temporary hostel-type accommodation or recently homeless and resettled into mainstream accommodation after a period of homelessness. Both sets of participants were included to capture perspectives on all stages of engaging with homeless services. In Scotland, only men assessed as in ‘priority need’ and owed the full statutory duty were included. Participants were all Irish or UK nationals and all were over 18, with a spread of age groups represented. The sampling strategy at this stage was both opportunistic and purposive. Contacts made in the previous phases of research were used to gain access to current and resettled service users. Participants were accessed through three different services/organisations to ensure a spread of experiences and help reduce sample bias. The fieldwork focused on one group of homeless households (single men) for several reasons. First, focusing the fieldwork in this way allowed the experiences of this group to be considered in more depth and thus aided in the comparison of experiences and outcomes between Scotland and Ireland. Second, Scottish reforms of the early 2000s brought single homeless men (without any specific ‘vulnerability’ in addition to their homelessness) into the statutory safety net for the first time, and thus their experiences as ‘rights bearers’ is particularly interesting. Third, this offered one way of overcoming slightly different understandings or usages of the concept of ‘homelessness’ in each country1. Whilst both countries share a broad legal definition of homelessness, in practice Irish services focuses on a narrower group of people than Scottish services, namely rough sleepers, those in emergency/transitional

1 ‘Conceptual equivalence’ has been identified as one methodological challenge of comparative

research, referring to the risk that concepts may not be used consistently to refer to the same set of ideas and understandings in different research settings (Hantrais, 1999). Quilgars et al. (2009) give a practical account of how they dealt with the ‘conceptual relativism’ of various concepts in a comparative EU housing study. In this study, as well as focusing on one specific group of homeless households in Scotland and Ireland, the qualitative methodology allowed for an exploration of different meanings, and vignettes were used to cut through national contexts and explore participant understandings of homelessness and responses to it.

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accommodation and soon-to-be-released prisoners with no address (Anderson et al., 2008). Policy background: Approaches to homelessness in Scotland and the Republic of Ireland Policies to address homelessness in Scotland and Ireland have undergone major shifts over the past few decades. In Scotland, these shifts were accelerated by the devolution settlement of 1999, which allowed policy makers to both build on and ‘radically diverge’ from a UK-wide legislative framework established in the late 1970s2. This UK framework is highly unusual in providing a legally-enforceable right to housing (Fitzpatrick and Stephens, 2007) and Scottish reforms have widened and deepened these legal rights, establishing what is seen as a ground breaking, inclusive and progressive rights-based approach to homelessness (Pawson, 2008; Anderson, 2012). A series of recommendations made by the Homelessness Task Force (1999-2002), which brought together central and local government, practitioners and voluntary and campaigning organisation, were taken forward in the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 and the Homelessness etc. Act 2003. The 2001 Act placed an expanded duty on local authorities to provide temporary accommodation for all homeless households, both during the process of their application being assessed and for a short period afterwards (normally 28 days). It also required local authorities to produce comprehensive strategies to assess levels of homelessness in their area and to develop multi-agency responses. In addition, the act imposed new legal duties on Registered Social Landlords to provide accommodation for homeless households through Section 5 referrals from local authorities. Of most relevance here, the 2003 reforms made provisions to phase out the ‘priority need’ category, a key rationing device under previous legislation, meaning that virtually all homeless people in Scotland would be entitled to settled housing through their local authority by 2012, a duty normally discharged through the allocation of a social housing tenancy (Fitzpatrick et al, 2009). Whilst other countries have rights to housing or shelter in various forms, Scotland is highly unusual in (a) bestowing these rights on virtually all homeless households3 (b) having mechanisms to individually enforce these rights through domestic courts (ultimately, by judicial

2 Some powers relevant to homelessness remain reserved, e.g. housing benefit and financial issues

that affect the housing market. 3 The 2003 Act included provision to reform and soften the ‘intentionality’ criterion in Scotland and to

suspect the ‘local connection’ referral rules, but neither of these provisions have been brought into force. National informants saw action on these elements of the reform package as highly unlikely in the near future.

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review through the Court of Sessions)4 and (c) by providing a right to ‘settled’, not only emergency accommodation5. These reforms have attracted international attention and praise, with the Scottish Executive receiving and Housing Rights award from the Centre for Housing Rights and Evictions (an international NGO) in 2003 and the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights endorsing the Scottish framework in 2009 (see Anderson, 2012). Ireland’s ‘revolution’ in responses to homelessness began in the mid 1980s in response to concerted action by the voluntary sector and related media attention. An attempt to oblige local authorities to provide suitable accommodation for homeless households in a 1983 private members bill generated strong opposition from those concerned that such legislation would create an unsustainable financial burden on the state, fuel costly court cases and interfere with social housing allocations by prioritising certain groups. Eventually, the Housing Act 1988 was passed, which gave local authorities flexibility in how they dealt with homelessness, requiring them to monitor and assess homeless and housing need. An obligation to help was replaced with an expectation that they would do so, and various steps were taken to enable a local service response. By the mid 1990s, the limits of this approach were becoming clear. A review of provision in Dublin highlighted issues about the range of services on offer to homeless households and a lack planning and coordination. In response, the Dublin Homeless Initiative was established in 1996 to coordinate services across the capital and provide mechanisms for stronger partnership between statutory and voluntary organisations in the sector. Two years later a Cross-Departmental Team on Homelessness was established under the Cabinet Committee on Social Inclusion. These activities led to the first national homelessness strategy in 2000 (Homelessness: An Integrated Strategy), which specified that homeless forums involving local authorities, health boards and voluntary organisations were to be established in each county to co-ordinate service delivery. An independent review of the strategy published in 2006 (Fitzpatrick Associates, 2006) was positive about progress, but pointed to significant inconsistencies of provision across the country. It therefore proposed that the homeless action plans proposed in the integrated strategy be placed on a statutory footing which was realised in the 2009 Housing Act which legally requires local authorities to establish homeless forums and produce these plans. The review also recommended a shift in focus onto providing long-term housing and care options for homeless people and 4

Since 1977, a very substantial body of administrative case law has been generated by the statutory homelessness provisions (Robson and Poustie, 1996). Legal challenges in Scotland have been increasingly rare however and key informants in this study noted the lack of legal challenges pursued under the legislation. 5 Regulations brought in in 2010 (Scottish Government, 2010) allow for discharge of duty into a short

assured tenancy in the private rented sector if certain conditions around tenancy length, support, affordability and consent are met. Available evidence suggests however that these provisions are not being widely used by local authorities (SCSH and Crisis, 2011).

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away from emergency accommodation. The National Homeless Consultative Committee was established to revise existing strategies and a new strategy (The Way Home: A Strategy to Address Adult Homelessness in Ireland, 2008-2013) was published in August 2008. A 2008 evaluation of Dublin’s homelessness services raised similar concerns about improving access to settled accommodation to prevent the ‘silting up’ of emergency homeless accommodation (Homeless Agency, 2008, p56). The Dublin Region Homeless Executive (formally, the Homeless Agency) now supports the Homeless Consultative Forum and Management Group as required by the Housing Act (2009) and these institutions are carrying forward a reconfiguration of homeless, housing, support and care services in the capital in line with the Pathways to Home model (Homeless Agency, 2009). This hopes to ensure “the swift and speedy exit from homelessness into housing with support (as required) for those experiencing it” and has the core aims of preventing homelessness, eliminating the need to sleep rough, and eliminating long-term homelessness (Downey, 2011). The evolution of these policies in Ireland has been influenced by the ‘social partnership’ arrangements between the government, employers, trade unions and voluntary or third sector that dominated policy making processes from the late 1980s (O’Sullivan, 2004). The approach involves: stakeholder negotiation supported and channelled by authoritative government coordination; an emphasis on continuous improvement, transparency, monitoring; and the ratcheting up of standards rather than compliance to minimum standards and punishment for poor performance (NESC, 2002; O’Donnell, 2003). As such, responses to homelessness have focused “on generating, through dialogue, a shared understanding of policy issues with a consequent focus on problem solving” (O’Sullivan, 2012). The reform programme has benefitted from sustained political will and investment in homeless services has to date proven resilient in the face of cutbacks, with key figures keen to protect budgets in this area (O’Sullivan, 2012). Legal Rights and Stigma Being homeless has important socio-psychological dimensions. McNaughton (2008, p142) for example, drawing on longitudinal qualitative research with 28 individuals with experiences of homeless in a Scottish city describes how becoming homeless signified becoming a 'failed individual' and becoming ‘other’ to the norms of the society they lived in. The set of attributes that attract stigma change over time and between places (Lloyd, 2010, p17) and the precise form stigma takes is culturally determined (Neuberg et al., 2000 cited in Lloyd, 2010, p23). The notion that rights-based approaches may help minimise stigma by casting homeless people as ‘rights bearers’ with entitlements rather than recipients of charity or state largesse has clear lineage from the idea that social rights create a uniform status of citizenship that binds members of a community together with a common identity (Marshall, 1949). Comparative welfare state literature has shown that welfare state structures and institutions affect attitudes to ‘the poor’ or otherwise disadvantaged groups.

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Drawing on Esping-Anderson’s ‘three worlds of welfare’, studies have demonstrated high support for welfare policy in social democratic regimes, medium support in conservative regimes, and low support in liberal regimes (Larsen, 2006). This pattern is most often explained by the fact that means testing and targeting, as opposed to universalism, create a clear and visible distinction between ‘them’ (recipients of state welfare) and ‘us’, feeding negative attitudes towards these groups. Taking these insights into account, the application of Marshall’s ideas to the specific case of legal rights to housing for homeless people becomes problematic: rights to housing for homeless households such as those found in Scotland are strictly targeted and selective, and therefore may themselves stigmatise those who benefit from these rights. Bengsston (2001) has pointed to the pitfalls of legal rights-based approaches to homelessness on exactly this basis, endorsing instead general intervention in the housing market to ensure it functions for all. Scotland and the Republic of Ireland are generally considered to be ‘liberal welfare regimes’6 and both pursue selective and targeted responses to homelessness.7 This study asks whether within-regime type differences in homelessness policies make any difference to experiences of stigma. Existing evidence suggests that the ways in which targeted policies are designed and implemented can make a difference to experiences of stigma. For example, Stuber and Schlesinger (2006) found that the way in which programmes were implemented (waiting times and the nature of interactions with service providers) could impact on the stigma experienced by American recipients of means tested welfare. In the field of homelessness, ‘Housing First’ approaches have been identified as less stigmatising than ‘staircase’ models (in which those engaged with homelessness services are required to progress through various ‘levels’ of service before being accessing mainstream housing) (Fitzpatrick and Stephens, 2007, p73). Here, the focus is on whether the presence or absence of legal rights makes a difference to stigma among homeless single men. Link and Phelan conceptualise stigma as the convergence of six interrelated components: labelling, stereotyping, separation, status loss, discrimination and a ‘power situation’ (2001, p367). This account of stigma offers a useful framework through which to consider the impact of rights-based approaches to homelessness. This section focuses on the impact of legal rights on three of these component parts of stigma: labelling, stereotyping and status loss. This reflects where the most significant and interesting impacts of rights-based approaches appear to lie. The data

6 There are enduring debates on this point. See Benjaminsen et al., 2009 and Cousins, 1997.

7 Scotland and Ireland share several other broad brush characteristics, including their small size,

location in Northern Europe, political and cultural history. These common features offer an important rationale for selecting these two cases as ‘most similar systems’ (Przeworski and Teune, 1970, cited in Pickvance, 2001, p14) an approach to comparative research which aims to “choose societies which have most features in common but which show variation among them in the independent variables whose effects are of interest.” (Pickvance, 2001, p14). Different cultural, institutional and political contexts remain between the two cases, meaning that thorough contextualisation of the research and findings will still be necessary.

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gathered as part of this study is poorly placed to comment on particular dimensions of stigma, namely, discrimination. Labelling Scottish key informants who took part in this study commented that legal rights crystallize and render more salient the label of homelessness: “B: It’s often argued that this rights-based approach can overcome the stigma of homelessness. Do you think there’s any truth in that? A: I think it can cut both ways. I think there’s a risk that it does the opposite… Because the label ‘homeless’ is something that’s applied to more people, becomes better known… I think that the homeless label is still a problem; I think it’s still something which it gives you access to something valuable but it’s not necessarily in your interests” (Scottish key informant, academic). The label gives qualifying households access to a valuable and scarce resource (settled housing, usually in the form of a social housing tenancy), potentially fuelling negative attitudes among the public as well as professionals in the sector: “Speaking purely as an ex practitioner, I know that in terms of stigmatising homeless people, it doesn’t actually help when you’re almost having, I was going to say ‘them’ I don’t mean it in a negative way, but you’re almost having homeless people forced upon you. There must be a better way of working in partnership. This is where section 5 falls down actually, where it becomes a negative tool if you like, when a local authority hands over a piece of paper to a housing association and says ‘there you are, find me a house in 6 weeks for that person, or else’, and that can’t be good for anybody” (Scottish key informant, social housing sector). Another national informant commented that “people should be able to access what they need and the help they need, without having to get the tag of being ‘homeless’” (Scottish key informant, statutory sector). She identified this issue of labelling as one of the early failures of the legislation. This and other key informants however described how more nuanced approaches to implementation had evolved to account for some of these issues, in particular preventative approaches that can help people avoid the statutory system and label of homelessness. Stereotyping When asked how legal rights may help overcome stigma, one Scottish key informant (academic) explained how a rights-based approach promote a more progressive understanding of homelessness as not simply the result of individual failings: “By saying that it’s a civil right [settled housing] and everyone’s entitled to it, [homelessness is] promoted as something that could happen to anyone, I mean that’s one of the critical things, is the attempt to play up the aspect of homelessness that is about emergency, unforeseen circumstances, reasons that aren’t about personal problems” (Scottish key informant, academic).

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As such, legal rights may offer support to an alternative discourse around homelessness that moves away from more discrediting and stigmatising stereotypes of homeless people as passive, undeserving and failures in a society that values self-reliance. However, it was recognised that this may be limited to those working in the homeless sector: “it only does that in the circle that it immediately effects, I don’t think the 2001 or 3 Act more widely moved any of those stigmas or stereotype” (Scottish key informant, voluntary sector). This would suggest that an alternative view of those who are homeless as rights bearing citizens is operating alongside other devaluing stereotypes and associations rather than replacing them. Several Scottish key informants noted that a focus on shifting public attitudes had not been a main plank of the Task Force’s recommendations and that this has limited the extent to which stigmatizing attitudes among the general public have shifted: “One of the things that was discussed very early on in the Homelessness Task Force is whether we needed, linked to everything, a major public awareness campaign of the range of people who become homeless. I just think that we haven’t even begun to address the picture someone has in their head when they hear the term homelessness or homeless person” (Scottish key informant, voluntary sector). Status Loss Status loss involves the labelled and stereotyped person or group experiencing downward placement in the status hierarchy. According to Link and Phelan (2001) this shapes social interactions in a way that produces unequal outcomes, even where overt discrimination is not obvious. Scotland’s rights-based approach to homelessness appears to offer considerable advantages in this regard, by promoting a sense of legitimate entitlement to support, services and assistance among service users, giving them status as ‘rights bearers’ and combatting the status loss associated with homelessness. The sense of legitimate entitlement bolstered by Scotland’s rights-based approach manifested itself in a greater tendency for homeless men in Edinburgh to articulate that society has a collective responsibility to respond to homelessness: “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 it” (Edinburgh hostel resident). “Everybody in Britain has a right to accommodation… 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 that, I mean we maybe say that we have not got wealth, but there’s a lot of wealth in Britain, so, I think it’s ridiculous that people are homeless” (Edinburgh hostel resident). It also manifested itself in apparently higher expectations about the standards of services they should receive as homeless people:

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“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, statutory service provider). Edinburgh hostel residents tended to feel dissatisfied and frustrated by their temporary accommodation: “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 hostel resident). “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 sorta does, or can, cos like I say I’m just champing at the bit, ready to go, but it’s like your in a kind of limbo” (Edinburgh hostel resident). This was in marked contrast to Dublin hostel residents, who tended to be less critical about where they were staying: “Yeah, where I am here, is perfect.” (IDu SU BL 5, 207:221) “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 hostel resident) This is despite the fact that insofar as this study can offer evidence on the comparative quality of temporary accommodation, Edinburgh’s stock appeared to be of a markedly higher standard than equivalent accommodation in Dublin, an observation which makes considerable sense in the context of the different monitoring, licensing and regulation regimes in Scotland and Ireland. This disconnect between actual standards of and apparent satisfaction with temporary accommodation may in part reflect that Scotland’s rights-based approach fosters a sense of entitlement and higher expectations, promoting agency and assertiveness among service users rather than passivity and acceptance. It also encourages service providers to see these claims as a legitimate manifestation of the legal duties owed rather than unwarranted or unreasonable demands. This virtuous circle may help drive up standards and nourish a ‘virtuous circle’ of improvements notwithstanding that a ‘sense of entitlement’ about recipients of

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support may be seen as undesirable by policy makers, the public and service providers. That said, key informants involved in this study tended to emphasise the value of these kinds of attitudes: “I think there is a sense of people knowing that if they’re homeless, they can expect a service provided to them… I think there’s a reasonable understanding people have that if they’re homeless there’s a network of services, there and I think that’s an advantage” (Scottish key informant, voluntary sector). Another Scottish key informant agreed that “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, voluntary sector). From this perspective, the gratitude and strong sense of personal responsibility among Dublin’s homeless service users could be interpreted as a policy failure. Where Scottish service users more readily felt entitled to support, Dublin service users more readily emphasised their own responsibility for their homelessness: “B: Do you think you’ve been treated fairly and with respect? A: Yes, yes. You know, if I’ve got any fault let’s say, it’s towards meself, because I’d say I should’ve been personally linking in myself … I should’ve been maybe talking more about what’s on me mind and everything, so it’s not the staff’s fault… I’ve got no qualms … if only for alcohol getting in the way I think I would’ve been housed, because I’ve not been pushing it as hard as I should have, you know? … you can’t go round with an attitude of this and this is against me, oh poor me, and expecting people with magic wands to come along, you have to put whatever you can yourself in, you know?” (Dublin hostel resident) “when I was awarded the place in the B and B I never thought for a minute that I’d still be living in town in 3 years time. 6 months I thought, I would be definitely gone in 6 months, but as I said, I fell into a rut, just of not doing anything, which is half my fault, because if you need help I suppose you need to look for it, you can’t expect people to just ring and knock on your door.” (Dublin hostel resident) The impact of legal rights to housing on stigma among homeless people appears to be complex. Rights crystallise and render more visible the ‘label’ of homelessness whilst at the same time promoting a more progressive understanding of homelessness among those working in the sector. The most significant difference between the two countries in this regard is in the different status of homeless service users: service users experiencing homelessness within a rights-based framework had higher expectations and a sense of legitimate entitlement compared to their Dublin counterparts. Service users in Dublin had lower expectations, were less critical of services and standards and were grateful for the assistance they received, emphasising their own responsibility for their situation and thus appearing to take on or experience a ‘lower status’ as a ‘failed’ homeless person. In addition to having psycho-social impacts, these tendencies appeared to undermine more active and assertive attempts to access settled housing.

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Legal Rights and Housing Needs This section moves on to consider the impact of legal rights on meeting housing needs. Bengtsson (2001) has argued that without clear specification, the distinction between ‘selective’ and ‘universal’ policy approaches becomes blurred and the risks of conflating ‘rights-based’ with ‘universal’ approaches to social policy has been noted above. In practice, welfare rights tend to be both selective and conditional, thereby creating ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ regarding legal entitlements to various services and resources. Scotland’s current rights-based approach is an example of a selective, conditional and enforceable welfare right. The reforms of the early 2000s redrew the boundaries between insiders and outsiders that had been established by earlier UK-wide legislation, specifically changing the status of single homeless men to ‘insiders’ regardless of their status as specifically ‘vulnerable’. In the context of this study, these comments prompt two broad questions regarding the impact of legal rights on meeting housing needs: (1) Do rights-based approaches better meet the needs of single homeless men owed the full statutory duty (‘insiders’) than non-rights-based approaches meet the needs of those in similar situations? And (2) How do legal rights effect the distribution of housing between homeless households (‘insiders’) and others in housing need (‘outsiders’) with ‘comparable underlying housing needs’ (HC Deb. 18.7.94, c.21, quoted in Fitzpatrick and Stephens, 1999, p422) who are not statutorily homeless? Several additional questions are also raised by a consideration of the impact of legal rights meeting housing needs: 1. Do rights-based to homelessness promote greater supply social housing, easing

competition and widening access? 2. Do legal rights undermine a needs based allocation of settled housing by creating

a perverse incentive for households to apply as homeless? 3. Do rights-based approaches foster a legalistic and adversarial climate directing

resources away from addressing housing needs? Due to constraints of time and space, this paper will focus on the first of these questions, although elements of the other themes will be touched upon. The main focus of this section is on the different ways in which Scotland and Ireland’s policy approaches prioritise and balance the needs of homeless single men (in particular their need for settled housing) with or against other policy objectives. Housing needs and statutory obligations in Scotland Whilst all policy approaches involve a mix of both rules (sometimes legally enshrined) and elements over which service providers or ‘street level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky, 1980) have discretion (Jones et al., 1978), this study points to a significant contrast in the tenor and culture of service provision in Edinburgh and Dublin, which can be traced in part back to the more rule-bound and less discretionary nature of Scotland’s rights-based approach. One of the key advantages of this ‘rule-boundedness’ was identified as the ‘clarity’ it offers to a group typically considered

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‘hard to reach’: “people are clear on or can be made clear on what their rights are and that to a large extent forces local authorities to deal equitably with homeless people” (Scottish key informant, statutory sector). A local informant agreed: “The key to it is it acts as a safety net. The government are quite clear to all local authorities: this is exactly what you have to provide and what you have to do, you know? For the most vulnerable people it ensures that there is provision there” (Edinburgh, statutory service provider). Focusing activity around a statutory duty to provide settled housing, appeared to displace other considerations. This was in marked contrast to Ireland, where other policy objectives weighed much more heavily in homeless services constraining the ability of homeless households to access settled housing. These different dynamics are best illustrated by responses to one of the vignettes used. Local informants were asked what the likely experiences and outcomes of engaging with homeless services would be for a 24 year old man who has been asked to leave by the friends he’s staying with. According to the vignette, the man 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. Edinburgh local informants had various concerns about “the range of issues there which are going to impact on his ability to find and sustain accommodation” (Edinburgh, statutory service provider) (his willingness to engage with services and address his addiction needs for example). It was seen as a risk that he might remain homeless for a long period of time for these reasons. Nevertheless, this individual would be owed a full statutory duty for settled accommodation and if he remained engaged with services would most likely be allocated a social housing tenancy with support. It was not within the power of local authority housing officers to take into account this individual’s perceived ‘deservingness’, motivation, commitment or readiness to sustain a tenancy8. One local informant saw this as a key strength of the approach: “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 housing officer) Scotland’s rights-based approach also seemed to crowd out considerations about the impact of the homelessness legislation on the ‘social mix’ of neighbourhoods and a concern to maintain ‘sustainable communities’. This objective concerns the

8 It was within their capability to ensure adequate support was put in place to help them sustain their

tenancy however. Although the provision of housing support is not currently a matter of legal entitlement, the Housing (Scotland) Act 2010 introduced a statutory duty on local authorities to assess the support needs of homeless households and to provide that support. These provisions have not yet been brought into force.

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possible ‘negative externalities’ to local residents of housing significant numbers of homeless people in a particular area, responding to the idea that spatial concentrations of disadvantaged groups can lead to a lack of ‘social capital’, social exclusion, stigmatisation, reduced job opportunities and exposure to a high level of ‘deviant activities’ leading to fear of crime and resident dissatisfaction (Busch-Geertsema, 2007, p214; Anderson, 2007). The statutory homelessness system means that local authorities must honour their duties to homeless households even if this comes at a cost of concentrating poorer or lower income households in particular areas. In general, participants in this research tended to support this prioritisation of possible policy objectives: “People quite often see meeting housing need and creating balanced communities as in opposition… and the fact is the people we house through the homeless route come from those communities… they are part of the community and I think what people mean by that is, they’re talking about people with complex needs and maybe challenging behaviour, but to me they’re not in conflict, creating balanced communities means meeting the needs of everybody in the community, it’s not about excluding people” (Scottish key informant, statutory sector). Overall, responses to this vignette in Edinburgh describe a clear and transparent process of assessment, which foregrounds the objective of meeting a homeless person’s need for settled housing over other objectives and limits the capacity of service providers to take into account other considerations. It does so by placing responsibility on local authorities to secure such accommodation, in a context where they have access to social housing, either through their own stock or through RSLs, who they have the power to compel to house homeless people. Balancing housing needs and other policy objectives in Ireland The timbre and content of responses to this vignette were markedly different in Ireland, where a host of considerations about ‘desert’, ‘personal responsibility’, ‘housing readiness’ and reactions from the local community played a much greater role in determining whether, how and when this hypothetical single homeless man would gain access to settled accommodation. In the absence of local authorities and service providers having legal obligations, the processes around homelessness service provision appeared to be far more opaque and the outcomes of those processes more contingent. This difference in the ‘rule-boundedness’ of Scottish and Irish approaches manifested itself in a wider gap between strategic policy objectives and service provision in Ireland. At the policy-making and strategic level, both countries emphasised a ‘housing led’ approach to homelessness, according to which homelessness services aim to get homeless households into settled housing, with appropriate supports, as soon as practicable. There is similarly a resistance to strict ‘staircase’ or ‘continuum of care’ models, whereby service users must progress through various levels of service in order to become ‘housing ready’. In Dublin however, a philosophy of progression and ‘housing readiness’ (homeless men having

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to demonstrate that they are ready for settled accommodation) appeared to nevertheless permeate services and stymie flow through and out of temporary accommodation. In response to the vignette described above, these Dublin service providers are discussing what would be considered when deciding whether this man would be allocated a social housing tenancy: “X: The concern for us there in allocations is, would he be capable of independent living? So we wouldn’t give a unit where we felt really he wasn’t able to look after himself, but it would be a case of, he’d have to be monitored and we’d take the recommendation from [the temporary accommodation staff] to say yes, he can manage it... Z: the problem I would say with a 24 year old is, he’s still young, he still wants to enjoy life and get up to mischief and things like that, so he’s not stable enough I would feel… Being at that younger age, he hasn’t really addressed all those issues of why he became homeless, do you know what I mean?” (Discussion between two Dublin statutory service providers)

Homeless men in Dublin reflected these dynamics in their comments: as well as being more satisfied with what appeared to be lower quality temporary accommodation, they were more accepting of longer periods in temporary accommodation, concerned about managing day to day life in such accommodation and reaching a point where they were ‘housing ready’ rather than moving on as fast as possible. The following comment came from one Dublin man who had been in various forms of temporary accommodation for three years: “You wait years in Ireland and even then you’re not assured of a place… I know they don’t look too favourably on criminal convictions and things like that. I don’t know how long I’ll be waiting” (Dublin hostel resident). Another explained his understanding of being in temporary accommodation: “It’s supposed to be temporary and as I say, I’ve been here now a year and I’ve filled out forms… [and] I’ve attended these courses and that so, they say I’ve made good progress now so they haven’t asked me to leave or move on as quick… it’s sort of a trial, in a place like this, to see who’s worthy of getting [move on accommodation] and whose pulling their socks up and putting the effort in and staying clean and things like that, and getting back to their normal life” (Dublin hostel resident). These kinds of attitudes among service users and service providers stand in stark contrast to those observed in Edinburgh and risk reinforcing homeless people’s position in temporary accommodation. It was not only whether homeless men were considered ‘housing ready’ that influenced their chances of accessing settled housing. If a homeless person is under consideration for a social housing tenancy in a particular area, the housing manager

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for that area will run an ‘estate management check’ establishing, for example, their criminal record. Housing managers have discretion in how they employ the results of these tests, but in practice a negative result would invariably exclude them from accessing the property. These Dublin service providers explained: “Z: they would have to do an estate management check on him, to check his background to see if he’s been in trouble with the Guards [police] and that could put a stop on him being housed for another 12 months or, it depends on the housing officer. Y: Depends on the charges. X: There’s a lot of that, the Guarda [police] check everybody before we put them into standard social housing, and a lot of them because of their past would raise alarm bells to be honest with you, there’s a screening done“ (Discussion between three Dublin statutory service providers). Concerns about ‘social mix’ in the area of the proposed property would also come into play: housing managers could use their discretion on a case by case basis to resist rehousing a particular potential tenant due to a perceived need to spread the population of ‘needy’ tenants more evenly across the city: “There are a couple of specific areas in Dublin that have a disproportionately high level of social housing of various types, so there are times when the housing manager will say look, you need to pepper-pot it more around, there needs to be more of an integration” (Dublin, statutory service provider). Dublin local informants also acknowledged that the specific dynamics of the local community would be considered: “If you were putting them [the 24 year old homeless male with complex needs] into a high demand area and the residents are very active, the manager has to say ‘no, I can’t take him into that property, but I would consider him down the road where residents are not as active and they do accept people on their doorstep’.” (Dublin, statutory service provider).

All of these factors (concerns about housing readiness, motivation, ‘desert’, estate management checks, considerations about social mix and community reactions) created barriers to Dublin’s homeless single men moving out of temporary accommodation and into settled housing. This set of dynamics pose a significant challenge to efforts underway to reconfigure Dublin’s homeless services: if issues of flow through the system are not addressed then efforts to reduce the number of emergency beds may have the result of squeezing homeless households into other less satisfactory housing situations: “We took beds out of the emergency system and it’s had a knock on effect. The idea was to put more resources onto the long term and to the move on and to reduce the amount of money that was being spent on emergency. The doing of that is more difficult than it seems, because when you start reducing the emergency, it’s difficult

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to do unless you tackle the move on first. We thought we had moved people on, but we didn’t, not the numbers that we had to” (Dublin, statutory service provider). In sum, there appears to be a more plural concern to balance different policy objectives in Dublin and this works against a more focused needs-based response to homelessness such as that evident in Edinburgh. Overall, the effect of these dynamics is to create inertia and stem a more dynamic flow of service users through temporary accommodation in Dublin. The statutory duties of Scottish local authorities seem to offer a blunter, less nuanced, but in some ways more effective policy tool, playing a role in creating greater momentum and flow, with considerations of need crowding out and trumping competing policy objectives. The limits of rights-based approaches Scotland’s rights-based approach appears to offer some significant advantages over Ireland’s social partnership model in terms of ameliorating stigma and meeting the needs of single homeless men. The study also offers perspectives on some of the perceived risks associated with a rights-based approach. Three particular risks are worth brief discussion. These concern perverse incentives to ‘go homeless’ in order to access settled housing; the risk of creating an adversarial climate around homelessness provision; and the balance between meeting ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ needs. There have been “consistent concerns about the apparent ‘moral hazard’ intrinsic to the structure of the homelessness provisions, in that they may incentivise households to have themselves defined as homeless in order to gain priority access to social housing” (Fitzpatrick and Pleace, 2012). There was a consensus among Scottish national and local informants that whilst these perverse incentives were present, they were not acted upon frequently enough to undermine the fairness or effectiveness of the statutory homeless system. Moreover, Irish informants were also concerned about perverse incentives emerging as they improved access to settled housing for homeless people. These perverse incentives then are not exclusive to ‘rights-based approaches’ (although it may be stronger in these circumstances) but apply in all systems that target resources (in this case, social housing allocations) to those in greatest need. There have also been concerns (drawn upon heavily in Irish debates about social policy) that rights-based approaches create an adversarial and legalistic climate, directing resources away from homeless services and into the pursuit of costly legal battles (Dean, 2002, p.157, O’Donnell, 2003, p5). This fear is not supported by this study. Judicial reviews and legal challenges are in fact rare in Scotland, and Edinburgh has put significant efforts into developing preventative and ‘housing options’ approaches in partnership with organisations across the city that aim to help minimise the need for people to use the statutory system. These more nuanced approaches were seen to have evolved in response to local authorities’ expanding duties suggesting that the rights-based framework itself has promoted and facilitated new kinds of partnership working, with the statutory system remaining the safety net at the core of provision.

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On the other hand, It has been argued here that rights-based approaches bolster a sense of entitlement and may therefore raise the possibility of antagonism at the level of service provision. In Dublin any dissatisfaction with the services (which was itself less common) rarely translated into assertions of entitlement. It may be then that rights0based approaches create both a positive sense of legitimate entitlement among service users, which encourages active rights claiming and expectations of good quality of services, as well as more malicious forms of entitlement that may undermine positive service interactions, moving beyond ‘active citizenship’ to ‘aggressive citizenship’. On the other hand, this conflict may be better interpreted as the working through of a new culture of service provision, and the demise of a model in which service users feeling entitled to services they are in fact entitled to is seen as a bad thing. Third, the efficacy of the Scottish approach depends in part on the idea that the statutory system provides a safety net for those in the greatest housing need. There has historically been scepticism however that statutorily homeless households’ ‘long-term housing needs’ are in fact any greater than those of other applicants for social housing (Fitzpatrick and Pleace, 2012, p235). Scottish informants differed in their responses to this concern: many defended the statutory system, arguing that those qualifying as ‘homelessness’ under the legislation were in fact those in the greatest housing need. That being said, the broad definition of homelessness used in Scotland blurs the distinction between homeless and non-homeless households, making this objection all the more pertinent. Participants in both countries suggested that housing need might best be seen as a continuum, rather than a potentially arbitrary and problematic distinction between homeless and non-homeless households: “there’s a continuum of housing need and there are people who are homeless in any one’s book, but there aren’t very many of them. The numbers of people who get re-housed because they are homeless in administrative terms is vastly greater than that and there’s something a bit artificial about that … I think that’s the Achilles heel of it” (Scottish key informant, academic). Another Scottish key informant from the social housing sector commented that whilst the reasons for phasing out of the priority need category are compelling, it has created real challenges for social housing providers seeking to balance the needs of homeless households with other households attempting to access social housing. These issues were most serious where the proportion of lets allocated to homeless households is highest. In 2010-11, the estimated proportion of social lets secured by homeless households through councils' discharge of their statutory duties reached as high as 61% in West Lothian (compared to a low of 22% in Scottish Borders) (Scottish Government, 2011). For these reasons, homelessness prevention and use of the private rented sector are seen as increasingly crucial elements of the policy response and a way of reconciling the trade off between prioritising the needs of homeless households and ensuring that reasonable resources flow to ‘outsiders’.

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Legal rights and understandings of homelessness The discussion above suggests that the alternative policy approaches to homelessness in Scotland and Ireland lead to different understandings of homelessness and different experiences of being a homeless ‘welfare subject’. Using Dean’s approach of considering discursive and moral ‘repertoires’ or ‘narratives’ (for a recent example Dean, 2011, p23), this study suggests a tendency towards different narratives in Scotland and Ireland. Mapping these narratives is not intended to provide a means of categorising participants straightforwardly, but of suggesting apparent tendencies to gravitate towards different narratives in each country. The narratives can be thought of as operating across two dimensions: first, support for homeless households can be understood as a matter of entitlement or as a matter of generosity and as something beneficiaries ought to be grateful for. Second, there is a distinction between more individualistic framings of homelessness that emphasise personal responsibility, and more solidaristic narratives that emphasise social injustice and collective social responsibility for responding homelessness. The distribution and strength of these narratives varied in Scotland and Ireland, as illustrated in figure 2. Irish service users tended to articulate gratitude for assistance received, with Irish participants generally seeing homelessness as a matter of personal responsibility. Scottish participants much more strongly articulated a sense of entitlement to assistance and a solidaristic ethos. Figure 2 Understandings of homelessness and alternative moral narratives

One of the key points to emerge from this analysis is that considerations of ‘desert’ and ‘personal responsibility’ although stronger in Ireland, emerged as important considerations in both countries. In Scotland participants often appeared committed

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to two moral intuitions. First, that homelessness policies and services should operate in a way that is ‘desert-‘ and ‘ambition-‘ sensitive: “You see people in the Dublin Corporation every day… they come in and they’re homeless and they’re there every single day looking for a place to live, but they’re coming in with bottles of beer and this and stoned or whatever … And you couldn’t give a person a flat in a complex that’s going to just sit there and, do you know what I mean?... you’ve got to take everything into consideration. They need to take a hard look at what they really want before going down to Dublin Corporation” (Dublin resident, recent experience of homelessness). “There’s people in this hostel that have stayed here before, they’ve stayed here years before, they’ve had properties and you know, they’re back in the system again, they’ve lost the property, and they’re on drugs… I don’t think they people should be helped again after they’ve already been helped once. They should go right to the bottom of the pile, and they should help anybody that hasn’t been helped before” (Edinburgh hostel resident). This perspective led this Scottish service to conclude that “the system’s not right” and Irish service users tended to perceive the Scottish approach as unfair: “Over there that sounds a bit like they’re doing all the work for you, that’s creating a bit of laziness, … no I don’t know if I totally agree with that no… I think the Irish system is a bit better, it’s a bit stricter, makes you do a bit more, and also then when you get it, you’ll appreciate it more, you’re more likely to hold onto it” (Dublin hostel resident). The second intuition was that everyone has a moral right to housing, or at least that there is a collective responsibility to respond to homelessness: “Everybody in Britain has a right to accommodation … society is wrong where people sleep on the street… there’s a lot of wealth in Britain, so, I think it’s ridiculous that people are homeless” (Edinburgh hostel resident). “I genuinely think that everyone should have a right because, you know, we’re all from the same… morally, it seems right for me” (Dublin, voluntary sector service provider). It has been established above that each policy regime has more fidelity to one or other of these intuitions (Ireland’s ‘social partnership’ model to the first and Scotland’s rights-based approach to the second). For some, this clash of ideas reflects the progression or maturation of responses to homelessness from those based on charity (incorporating ideas of desert), to those based on needs, and lastly to those premised on ideas about housing rights (see figure 3) (Kenna, 2011). According to this perspective, incorporating ideas about desert is anathema to rights-based approaches and homelessness policies ought overtime to evolve away from these kinds of considerations.

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An alternative view would be that these moral intuitions each have legitimacy and should be considered as part of a process of ‘reflective equilibrium’ (Rawls, 1999, p18). The question of how they are prioritised and weighed against each other, or how any trade-offs between objectives or ‘tragic choices’ are made is a matter for debate and deliberation in a democratic society. In the spirit of such debate, this section now addresses these normative questions explicitly, drawing on elements of thinking from political and moral philosophy in an attempt to arbitrate between them. Figure 3 Charity, needs and rights-based approaches (Adapted from Kirkeman Boesen and Martin, 2007, p10) Charity Approach Needs Approach Rights-Based Approach

Focus on input not outcome Focus on input and outcome Focus on process and outcome Emphasises increasing charity Emphasises meeting needs Emphasis realising rights Recognises moral responsibility of rich towards poor

Recognises needs as valid claims

Recognises individual and group rights as claims toward legal and moral duty-bearers

Individuals are seen as victims Individuals are objects of interventions

Individuals and groups are empowered to claim their rights

Individuals deserve assistance Individuals deserve assistance Individuals are entitled to assistance

Focuses on manifestations of problems

Focuses on immediate causes of problems

Focus on structural causes and their manifestations

Rawls argues against the use of considerations of merit or deservingness in principles of distribution and justice, on the basis that distribution based on these considerations will “in the end reward individuals for inherited traits for which the bearers of these favoured traits can claim no credit” (Arneson, 2008, p83). For Rawls: “it seems clear that the effort a person is willing to make is influenced by his natural abilities and skills and the alternatives open to him. The better endowed are more likely, other things equal, to strive conscientiously, and there seems to be no way to discount for their greater good fortune” (Rawls, 1999, p274). Similarly, Kymlicka (2004, p38) argues that within a utilitarian framework, people’s ‘external’ or ‘selfish’ preferences (about what other people should receive and why) should be discounted from decisions about distribution because they violate the underlying utilitarian commitment to equal consideration. These two perspectives however seem not to allow room for the articulated importance of desert and responsibility in considerations of justice and fairness. As Knight and Stemplowska comment, “In post-Rawlsian scholarship the idea that desert should dictate people’s entitlements is not fashionable, but it persists and perhaps nowhere more visibly than in the debates over responsibility and distributive justice” (2011, p17). It has also been an important theme in social policy debates, with ideas about responsibilities and conditionality in the design and delivery of welfare services remaining influential. Such considerations have played an important role in debates about homelessness policy. They were key themes in

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debates around the UK 1977 Housing (Homeless Persons’) Act and, as demonstrated above, there remains a continuing appetite for considerations of desert and responsibility to play a role in responses to homelessness alongside considerations about meeting needs. Even if the role of considerations around desert and responsibility are accepted however, the practicality of designing and implemented policies that accurately or adequately embody these concerns remains a challenge. Knight and Stemplowska summarise these debates: “Worries over adopting responsibility-sensitive policies point to the conceptual difficulties in settling on a robust concept of responsibility; the potential of conditionality to undermine the self-respect of those who are helped and those who are left behind as well as to undermine the more abstract ideals of equal moral worth and equal social status of every person; informational difficulties in gathering the type of information that would be needed to determine who is responsible for their (dis)advantage… [and] the costliness of setting up the necessary administrative system” (2011, p21). Miller offers a further route through this issue. He suggests that: “a just society is, in considerable part, a society whose institutions are arranged so that people get the benefits they deserve, and many legitimate complaints about existing societies appeal to this principle. But considerations of desert do not fully determine these institutional arrangements. They do not, for instance… tell us precisely how wide the dispersion of incomes should be… Because it is not wholly determinate, desert leaves room for other principles of justice to operate… A society can give people what they deserve but also set resources aside to cater to needs” (1999, p155). Elsewhere, he goes further, commenting that “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, such as health care” (Miller, 1999: 200). Various theoretical perspectives can be brought to bear in establishing housing as such a necessity. For example, Doyal and Gough describe housing as an ‘intermediate need’, which must be satisfied if the basic and universal needs of health and autonomy are to be fulfilled (Doyal and Gough, 1991: 157). Nussbaum (1999) conceives of housing as a means of guaranteeing bodily health and integrity, which are listed among her list of universal functional capabilities required for human flourishing. Similarly, King (2003), drawing on Nussbaum, has argued that housing is “an elemental condition for human flourishing” and should be seen as “a freedom right” rather than a socio-economic claim. If Miller’s line of thinking is pursued, then policies directed at those without housing should be designed around concerns of need rather than merit, responsibility or

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desert. If this normative conclusion is accepted and a needs-based response to homelessness is required, enforceable legal rights appear to go a significant way in ensuring that housing needs trump alternative considerations. This approach offers a way of both acknowledging the legitimacy of considerations of desert, and of discounting them in the provision of certain basic necessities. The question however of how best to define homelessness in a meaningful way and distinguish homeless households from others in housing need remains arguably the ‘Achilles’ heal’ of the Scottish model. Conclusions This paper has sought to bring evidence to bear on the claimed advantages of rights-based over non-rights-based approaches to homelessness. Drawing on qualitative data gathered from national informant, service providers and service users in Scotland and Ireland, two central arguments have been advanced. First, Scotland’s rights-based approach appears to ameliorate the stigma experienced by homeless men compared to their Irish counterparts. Whilst these legal rights crystallise and render more visible the label of homelessness, they also encourage a sense of legitimate entitlement among those experiencing homelessness and encourage those working in the homelessness sector to see the claims of this group as justified. Second, the comparison pursued here suggests that rights-based approaches crowd-out considerations of desert, responsibility, housing readiness and ‘social mix, ensuring a blunter, more effective focus on homeless people’s need to access settled housing. It has further been ventured that these alternative homelessness policy regimes lead to very different experiences of being a homeless ‘welfare subject’. Those experiencing homelessness in Dublin felt the weight of personal responsibility for their situation more heavily than their Scottish counterparts, having a stronger sense gratitude for support and related to this, a tendency to be uncritical of the at times poor quality of services they received. Not only do the alternative policy approaches lead to different psycho-social experiences, but these different experiences have implications on the outcomes of homelessness policy, specifically the standard of services available to homelessness households and their ability to access settled housing. Dublin’s homeless men emerge from this study as a more passive group of welfare subjects, lacking the sense of agency, entitlement and injustice that might in the end lead to (demands for) better services. In comparison, Scotland’s rights-based approach seems to foster a ‘virtuous circle’ of service user and service provider attitudes, fed by a supportive licensing, regulatory and legal framework that helps drive up standards and encourage flow through homeless services. In conclusion, the evidence presented here largely supports the growing international consensus in favour of rights-based approaches to homelessness. More specifically, the arguments developed above suggest that individually enforceable, legal rights to housing offer significant advantages to homeless households over

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