ABSTRACT
Social welfare policies have the potential to enhance people’s ability to make choices that safeguard their best interests. This chapter sets out how the state currently responds to impaired autonomy-competence by explaining the test for intentional homelessness under UK law which, as demonstrated in the case studies, denies housing to those who are deemed to have caused their own homelessness. It argues that far from achieving its stated aim to promote personal responsibility, the test for intentional homelessness only denies vulnerable people access to a locale in which they can develop and improve their autonomy-competence and, thus, their capacity for prudent self-government. They are the ‘rogues, vagabonds and sturdy beggars’ of Elizabethan times who are now referred to as ‘scroungers’, ‘skivers’ and ‘shirkers’, and by other pejorative terms that, regrettably, poison contemporary debates concerning the future of state welfare.
