This document summarizes a presentation on barriers to implementing a Housing First approach to homelessness. Key points include: - Housing First is still debated with some arguing certain groups can't live independently, while proponents see it as a paradigm shift. - Governance structures in some cities give outsized influence to groups skeptical of Housing First's principles. - Responsibility for homelessness being in welfare instead of housing departments isolates Housing First support. - Funding rules prevent money meant to build shelters from constructing permanent housing instead.

1. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013
What is Needed for Cities and their
Stakeholders to Put Their Money Where
Their Mouth Is?
Nienke Boesveldt
External PhD and Policy Manager
n.f.boesveldt@vu.nl
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2. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013
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3. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013
Why can nothing be second?
 Aim workshop: explain why housing first is
not yet the mainstream provision
 By looking at
 the local governance constellation
 the wickedness of the policy challenge at
stake

4. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013
My Theoretical Model on
Governance

5. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013
HF Example of Paradigm Shift
 To expand institutionalised services reduces rough
sleeping (= goal)
 Research showed (e.g Jencks, 1994; Van Doorn, 2002):
persons housed independent again experience relapse
into homelessness
 Recently: more research available on improved
successful methodologies (such as HF)
 New causal assumptions are possible
 Two dominant paradigms now coexist

6. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013
Research approach
 Case studies Copenhagen, Glasgow and
Amsterdam
 Documentation study and interviews all relevant
stakeholders

7. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013
Finding 1
Strong Images Debating and
Contesting Basics of HF
 HF paradigm still highly debated and
contested
 less by Government respondents
 more by Care Professionals and Clients

8. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013
Finding 1 Continued
 Policy documentation at times inconsistent
 ‘A stay in a temporary housing provision will help to be
able to clarify what needs the homeless must have’
 Addicts or Group-Unsuitable persons only get access.
Complex groups such as youth, women, mentally ill
rough sleepers and chaotic substance abusers are
excluded in some cases

9. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013
Strong Images I
 Misinterpretation:
 ‘having to move out again can be seen as a
punishment (client)’
 Efficiency:
 ‘wanting to save money (over our backs, client)’
 Cherry picking:
 ‘we might again loose the weakest people (NGO)’

10. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013
Strong Images II
 Hospitalized
 ‘they cannot sleep inside, some people need
shelters , some cannot live in their own apartment
(client)’ (R&W ‘73: old solution cause new problem)
 Loneliness
 ‘people in COUNTRY don’t care about others
mentally ill, they get even more frustrated (client)’
 Refusal
 ‘People are not prepared to have a house (client)’
 Cost effectiveness (specialist -> generalist)
 ‘No psychiatrist laying the floor’ (NGO)

11. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013
Strong Images III
Regarding Complex Groups
 ‘they're not ready’
 ‘they're not able to stay in independent living is
because they've got complex unmet need’
 ‘you can't repair 15 years of hurt by six months of
cognitive behavioural therapy (all: Care)’

12. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013
Theory
 Corporatist governance structure in two
cases (Ams, Cph) make these opinions or
images possibly strongly influential to
counter expertise on HF
 Political instead of technical (merit) criteria
dominate in this type of administration
(Painter and Peters, 2010)

13. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013
Corporatist
 Close linkage between state and society,
some official sanctioning of interest groups
by government. Particular interest groups
are accorded a legitimate role as
representatives of their sector. Only a
limited number of actors can play the
game, and those that do are bound closely
with the power of the state (Pierre and
Peters, 2000).

14. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013
Pluralist
 Government little involved with interest
groups directly, establishes arenas
through which groups work out their own
political struggles, establishes set of ‘rules
to the game’ about how decisions will be
made. No group considered dominant, all
groups have relative equal chances of
winning on any issue. Groups move in and
out relatively easily, largely at their own
initiative (Pierre and Peters, 2000)

15. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013

16. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013
Finding 2
Governance support HF too
isolated
 Funds and Responsibility traditionally in Care
and Welfare Dept. instead of Housing Dept.
 A case description

17. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013
 Local Administration: let us use the co-funds from the
national strategy meant to build shelters to construct own
permanent housing
 Regulations behind the cofounded money prevented this
 Almost ½ of the shelter funds has been refunded to the
state (whilst the number of rough sleeping in this case
increased)
 National Strategy aims at Housing First, in two cases the
state Ministries of Housing are not involved
 leading ministry homelessness strategy also only sees the
solution in the shelter system as a result

18. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013
Result: Muddling through
‘they are increasing the numbers of temporary
accommodation, because there is no other
option other than that we have to make an offer
to people (...) which for me means that people
are getting caught up in the homelessness
system rather than going straight to where they
need to be (NGO)’
‘There is a five year waiting list for HF, which is
targeted specifically at persons that get expelled
a lot’ (NGO)

19. EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Housing First. What’s Second?
Berlin, 20th September 2013
Wickedness (Rittel&Webber,’73)
 a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve
because of incomplete, contradictory, and
changing requirements that are often difficult to
recognize
 because of complex interdependencies, the effort
to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may
reveal or create other problems
 In this case the policy (e.g. to shelter persons) has
become part of the social problem and might even
have become the reason for the problem to exist
or persist (cf. Beck, 1992).