ABSTRACT
Homelessness is just as well-known a phenomenon in welfare Denmark as in other Western countries. Denmark has, however, a strong century-old tradition for institutionalising homelessness. In 1855, a Jewish-Danish author, MeIr Goldschmidt, published a novel entitled Homeless, published several years later in English. From the Middle Ages’ houses for lepers and victims of the plague to industrialisation’s work houses and poor farms and to the large mental hospitals and shelters for homeless, society has housed those among the homeless. A particular dominant group of homeless has been ‘moved’ from the position of homeless outcast to that of participants in what one could call ordinary social life. In Copenhagen, there have been established one or two such small asylums where mentally ill homeless with severe abuse problems, also of illegal drugs, could live permanently with a contractual right to stay at the asylum, which thus became their home.
