ABSTRACT
In the USA homelessness is a basic category for identifying poverty. In Europe things have gone differently. The predominant argument when the importance of housing factors in the production of homelessness is emphasized concerns the relationship between the decrease in affordable housing – or the increase in housing costs – and the decrease in incomes for various sectors of the population. The cost-income argument gives a more probable explanation to the phenomena of bad housing. Micro analyses reflect a series of methodological constraints that have been cleared up with regard to the use of individual case histories in studies on poverty. The extension of homelessness has also caused policies to be questioned yet again, and very radically, with regard to their traditional shortcomings. A more general criticism of social housing policies has concerned their effectiveness with regard to the poorest. Availability of appropriate housing is an important precondition for ‘integrated approaches’ aimed at social re-insertion of marginalized homeless.
