Mats Blid

Prediction of Homelessness and Housing Provisions in Swedish Municipalities

Abstract This article explores key predictors of homelessness rates in different Swedish municipalities, the accommodation provided and the coverage of accommodation to homelessness. In order to create realistic models, seven sets of factors represent various structural levels in stepwise regressions. These sets are urbanisation, economy, demographic composition, housing market, aggregated individual problems, political majority and policies and organizational features of the social services. The findings show that urbanisation is central to understanding variations in homelessness and has also impact on housing provisions. In addition, higher rent levels as well as aggregated psychiatric problems seem to increase the level of problems. Overall supply of apartments and the proportion of public housing are important factors in providing accommodation, and a demographic factor, such as the proportion of single-parent households, seems to enhance such a provision. Political majority as well as the functional organization of the social services seems independently to impact coverage rates. Despite the importance of urbanisation, findings indicate that a number of factors with impact on the problem and on the possibilities to handle them are manageable by the municipalities.

Normality or care – an inventory of Swedish municipalities’ responses to unstable accommodation for vulnerable groups

This article presents an inventory of policies and housing support interventions to the homeless and those at risk of becoming homeless in a representative sample of Swedish municipalities. Two types of intervention are included: various types of accommodation for those who are already homeless and daily life support for those at risk, either provided or financed by the social services in the municipality. Data were collected in 2004–2005 through a questionnaire e-mailed to local authority officials, in a stratified sample of about half of the Swedish municipalities (n=147). The results show that two types of housing intervention dominate the field: daily life support and sublet contracts, both of which have a relatively high normality factor, with a setting in normal housing. Daily life support includes care and is usually implemented before the tenant is evicted. The level of care related to various interventions fluctuates more between the municipalities than normality does. The more densely populated municipalities were more engaged in developing housing policies and administrative bodies to handle these. However, the implementation of housing policies does not seem related to improvements in the qualities of the interventions. On the contrary, the local authorities that have housing policies and administrative tools adapted to these policies provided a lower degree of both normality and care in the interventions. The results suggest that aspects of normality and care in the same type of housing interventions vary depending on the type of municipality, while the existence of policies has no influence on care and a negative effect on the degree of normality provided through the interventions.