Young people experience different treatment compared to older adults in the English welfare and homelessness systems, encountering varying levels of protection and disadvantage. This paper uses a value-pluralist perspective to explore the normative rationales for and the ethical defensibility of these policy differences. Evidence from 38 key informant interviews suggests that the English homelessness system is shifting towards a vulnerability-oriented response to young people. But an inconsistent value framework within the welfare system systematically disadvantages them without offering a corresponding degree of protection. As such, these closely-connected areas of social policy pull in opposing directions. Although individual positions targeting young people may (to greater and lesser extents) be justifiable, this disparity in values creates an incoherent and indefensible welfare policy landscape for this group.

Policy change is not an instantaneous or linear process. In fact, change includes several mechanisms working in tandem and even against one another. This article examines the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on homelessness policy in Canada. In a sector that is already plagued with emergency responses – rather than long-term solutions – the pandemic has initiated a critical juncture where policy change is possible, but not guaranteed. Although the existing failures to alleviate homelessness in Canada make policy failings even more obvious, aspects of the pre-existing Canadian response to homelessness negate change. The pandemic, however, has led to temporary solutions and created a setting where long-term change is possible. Using over 150 primary sources, this article analyses mechanisms of change and path dependence in the pandemic response to homelessness. The presence of such mechanisms is tested in three major Canadian cities.

Persons experiencing homelessness (PEH) or rough sleeping are a vulnerable population, likely to be disproportionately affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The impact of COVID-19 infection on this population is yet to be fully described in England. We present a novel method to identify COVID-19 cases in this population and describe its findings. A phenotype was developed and validated to identify PEH or rough sleeping in a national surveillance system. Confirmed COVID-19 cases in England from March 2020 to March 2022 were address-matched to known homelessness accommodations and shelters. Further cases were identified using address-based indicators, such as NHS pseudo postcodes. In total, 1835 cases were identified by the phenotype. Most were <39 years of age (66.8%) and male (62.8%). The proportion of cases was highest in London (29.8%). The proportion of cases of a minority ethnic background and deaths were disproportionality greater in this population, compared to all COVID-19 cases in England. This methodology provides an approach to track the impact of COVID-19 on a subset of this population and will be relevant to policy making. Future surveillance systems and studies may benefit from this approach to further investigate the impact of COVID-19 and other diseases on select populations.

For an increasing proportion of Australian households, the Australian dream of home ownership is no longer an option. Neoliberal housing policy and the financialisation of housing has resulted in a housing affordability crisis. Historically, Australian housing policy has afforded only a limited role to local government. This article analyses the results of a nation-wide survey of Australian local governments’ perceptions of housing affordability in their local government area, the possibilities for their meaningful intervention, the challenges they face, the role of councillors and councils’ perceptions of what levels of government should take responsibility for housing. Almost all of the respondents from Sydney and Melbourne councils were clear that there is a housing affordability crisis in their local government area. We apply a framework analysing housing policy in the context of neoliberalism and the related financialisation of housing in order to analyse the housing affordability crisis in Sydney and Melbourne. We conclude that in order to begin resolving the housing crisis in Australia’s two largest cities there has to be an increasing role for local government, a substantial increase in the building of social and affordable housing and a rollback of policies that encourage residential property speculation.

That domestic abuse is a human rights infringement has become recognised at policy, practice, and legislative level globally. Homelessness services are critical in averting and mitigating harm to those who have experienced domestic abuse. The British homelessness system achieves this, in part, through offering a legal right to housing in some circumstances. The Housing (Wales) Act 2014 integrates a human-rights based understanding of domestic abuse yet reduces legal rights to assistance. Based on analysis of interviews with fifty-two homelessness workers and twenty-four applicants I argue that moral commitments cannot compensate for legal rights; rather, they deresponsibilise homelessness services for addressing domestic abuse. I show (1) that workers saw cases where homelessness arose from domestic abuse as functionally beyond the remit of homelessness services (2) that empowered women were understood as undeserving by the system and (3) that workers saw domestic abuse cases as a broad and undefined threat to resources.

This critical and empirical article explores contemporary reproduction, experience, and responses to stigma in welfare delivery in Ireland. Combining qualitative data about lone parents (n22) gathered through two different research projects in 2017 and 2018 allows us to interrogate stigma in a multi-dimensional way and as an overarching experience as an ongoing project of neo liberalism. We analyse our findings using Baumberg’s (2016) typology of stigma which differentiates claim making stigma from personal and societal stigma, applying the framework to empirical data concerning lone parents’ recent experiences of Irish labour activation and homeless support services. We find that while behavioural conditionality necessarily frames this experience and constrains claimants, it is not totalising. We conclude by using Tyler’s concept of stigmacraft to situate the context of stigma as part of the political economy of welfare.

The Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 represents the most significant change to the rights of homeless people in England for decades. Through an analysis of the history of homelessness legislation in England, but focusing on the ‘ground-breaking’ 2017 Act, this paper explores how the homeless population is represented and ‘constructed’ in this new legislation and what this tells us about the place of homeless people in our society. In so doing, this paper exposes how the 2017 Act – a state instrument of apparent homelessness prevention – can be read and understood as contributing to rather than obviating the marginalisation and social exclusion of homeless people.

This paper examines how deportation became a solution to rough sleeping in pre-Brexit England. It identifies relationships between the social regulation of vulnerable and marginalised adults, contemporary governance arrangements and bordering practices characteristic of Britain's ‘hostile environment’. Drawing on media reports and grey organisational literature, the focus of discussion is events across 2015–2018 in which three London-based charities were criticised for working with the Home Office to deport homeless migrants under its European Economic Area Administrative Removal policy. The overall tenor of criticism was that collaboration with the government compromised the organisations’ independence and charitable missions and aims. This diminished their capacity to both advocate for vulnerable adults and effectively challenge oppressive state practices. The paper observes how state and nonprofit relations structure institutional and socio-legal responses to marginalised and ‘othered’ adults through commissioning and contracting mechanisms. It demonstrates that the social and legal control of homeless migrants may be differently constituted by institutions delivering services in relation to citizenship, vulnerability and marginalisation. This analysis incorporates a broader appraisal of institutional motivations, values and beliefs in social welfare delivery, including the historic role of charitable agencies in the criminalisation of social welfare users. Taken together, the paper offers an interdisciplinary critique of the relationships between border control, neoliberal governance and the sociocultural and historic construction of homeless migrants.