ABSTRACT
This chapter will examine how vulnerability has been socially constructed through housing policy, particularly in relation to people who are homeless and the way young people are expected to leave home. It will argue that, through homeless legislation and provision, homeless people are constructed as being to blame for their predicament and that young people, particularly working-class young people, are made vulnerable through housing policy. Furthermore, I believe, following Balchin (1998), that legislation and related social policy divide homeless people into categories of deserving and undeserving, underpinned by an individualist view of the causes of homelessness which ignores its structural and personal dimensions. Similarly, following Roche and Tucker (1997), I concurrently argue that housing policy for young people has been informed by two contradictory constructions, both with social and economic manifestations. One is to keep young people at home for fear of the immoral potential of being away, combined with the need for them to economically contribute to the home, and a contradictory push that they should be independent, underpinned by a flawed model of transitions into adulthood. I will trace the development and change in these discourses. I will focus mainly on the last 25 years, but it is important first to examine history further back than this as old constructions often inform more modern constructions, making them conflictual and contradictory.
