Research note 8/2011 Homelessness during the crisis European Commission Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion Social Situation Observatory – Income Distribution and Living Conditions 2011 Social Situation Observatory – Income distribution and living conditions Applica (BE), European Centre for the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research (AT), ISER – University of Essex (UK) and TÁRKI (HU) Nicole Fondeville and Terry Ward Applica November 2011 This Research note was financed by and prepared for the use of the European Commission, Directorate- General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion or position of the European Commission, Directorate- General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion. Neither the Commission nor any person acting on its behalf is responsible for the use that might be made of the information contained in this publication. 2 November 2011 European Commission Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion Social Situation Observatory – Income Distribution and Living Conditions 2011 Table of Contents Table of Contents ............................................................................................................ 3 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................. 4 2. Definition of homelessness in the EU ..................................................................... 4 3. Monitoring homelessness ....................................................................................... 6 4. Recent developments in homelessness in the EU ................................................ 8 Homelessness among migrants ....................................................................................................... 9 Homelessness among young people .......................................................................................... 12 Pathways into homelessness during the economic crisis ......................................................... 13 Measures to prevent homelessness ............................................................................................. 16 5. Concluding remarks ............................................................................................. 17 Annex: Recent trends in homelessness across the EU ............................................... 18 3 November 2011 European Commission Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion Social Situation Observatory – Income Distribution and Living Conditions 2011 1. Introduction The economic crisis which hit the EU in 2008 has been slow to recede in many countries where lack of jobs and high levels of unemployment have become major problems. Moreover, recovery which seemed to be underway until mid-2011 has stalled and the prospects of any early substantial improvement in both the economic and labour market situation seem remote. In this context, a growing number of people, especially those that have lost their jobs and are unable to find new ones, have faced difficulties in paying rents or servicing their mortgages. At the same time, welfare systems have come under increasing strain as the demand for income and social support has escalated. The situation has led to a rise in homelessness which could well become much more of a problem over the coming year and beyond. Although there is an acute lack of reliable data, nearly three out of four people in the EU believe that homelessness has increased in their country since 2007 1. This perception is particularly strong in the Central and Eastern European Member States as well as in Spain and in Greece, both of which have been especially badly affected by the economic downturn. Against this background, homelessness has also become a major policy concern at EU level as well as in many Member States. The European Parliament has adopted the aim of putting an end to homelessness by 2015 and the issue has featured prominently in meetings of the Social Protection Committee over the past two years as well as in the European Year against poverty in 2010. Any attempts to obtain a reasonably accurate figure for the number of homeless in the EU and the extent to which it is tending to rise in the prevailing economic situation, however, are fraught with both conceptual and practical difficulties. There is a lack of consensus on both how homelessness should be defined and how meaningful data should be collected and diverse methods of counting the number of people affected exist across Member States. The concern here is to examine the evidence on the number homeless people in different EU countries in order to obtain an indication of developments during the crisis period and the characteristics of those affected. It begins, however, by considering the methodological difficulties of compiling a comparable set of statistics on the problem. 2. Definition of homelessness in the EU Homelessness is not easy to define as it covers a diversity of living situations and affects various groups of people. It tends to be the culmination of a complex process, often extending over many years, with a range of pathways leading up it. Because of the complexity, it is often the case that narrow definitions are adopted, such as, in particular, rough sleeping or sleeping in special shelters, which reduce homelessness to its most visible forms. The ‘hidden’ homeless, such as those living with friends or relatives or in precarious 1 Special Eurobarometer 355, Poverty and Social Exclusion Report , December 2010. http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_355_en.pdf 4 November 2011 European Commission Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion Social Situation Observatory – Income Distribution and Living Conditions 2011 and unsuitable accommodation, need also to be covered to obtain anywhere close to a complete picture. To do so, however, raises difficulties since the coverage needs to exclude those who living in particular situation voluntarily, quite apart from problems of defining what constitutes precarious or inadequate housing, which is likely to vary between countries depending on what is regarded as the norm. FEANTSA 2, the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless, has developed a typology of the different categories of homelessness (see Box), but this typology has yet to be agreed and adopted by EU Member States. This makes it difficult to compare the situation not only between countries but also often between different places within countries as well as over time, since the same method is not necessarily used for surveys conducted at different points of time in the same location. The ETHOS categories of homelessness According to ETHOS – the European Typology of Homelessness and Housing Exclusion - the homeless can be classified into four categories: • people without a roof over their heads who sleep rough or in overnight shelters; • people without a home who, while they have a roof over their heads, are excluded from the legal rights of occupancy and do not have a place to pursue normal social relations (such as those living in hostels or temporary accommodation for the homeless, women living in refuge accommodation, migrants living in specific accommodation and people living in institutions); • people living in insecure housing, who do not have a secure tenancy and/or are threatened with eviction or are a victim of domestic violence; • people living in inadequate housing conditions (such as with friends or relatives, in squats, in caravans or illegal campsites, in conditions of extreme over-crowding and in other generally unsuitable places). There is therefore currently a wide range of definitions of homelessness used across the EU both to collect data and identify the scale of the problem and to determine the nature and scope of policies for tackling it (see Box). Definition of homelessness in different Member States In many countries, homelessness is defined by legislation. In Ireland for instance, it is defined by the Housing Act 1988, which includes people sleeping rough but excludes those living in state institutions. In the UK, several categories of homeless are legally defined: the street homeless (or those sleeping rough, the statutory homeless (households for which local authorities have a statutory duty to provide temporary accommodation) and the non-statutory homeless (who are regarded as “voluntarily” homeless). Similarly, in the Czech Republic and Italy, the homeless are considered to be those living on the streets and those using specific social services. In Finland and France, the homeless cover all who have no permanent accommodation and who sleep in places not meant for human habitation as well as in various types of temporary shelter, including those living in long-term hostels (such as women living with their children in refuges). In France, however, statistics on homelessness exclude those forced to stay in ‘bed- 2 Edgar, B. and H. Meert, Fifth Review of Statistics on Homeless in Europe , FEANTSA (European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless), 2006 http://www.feantsa.org/files/transnational_reports/2006reports/06RSen.pdf 5 November 2011 European Commission Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion Social Situation Observatory – Income Distribution and Living Conditions 2011 and-breakfasts’ or with friends or relatives. In Latvia, on the other hand, the homeless are more widely defined under the law on social aid to be ‘people with no permanent housing’. 3. Monitoring