ABSTRACT
Before a local authority owes its most extensive duty to rehouse an applicant under s. 193 of the Housing Act 1996, it must be satisfied that the applicant has cleared all several obstacles in the ‘homeless persons’ obstacle race’. In the parliamentary debates on the Housing Bill, homelessness appears to have been viewed as a fundamentally domestic issue. The priority given to dependent children and pregnant women is, it has been said, an indication of ‘the centrality of the family to housing’ which is ‘particularly important to the new right’s ideology of the family’. The ‘emergency’ cases fall into the ‘unforeseen homelessness’ situation, reminiscent of the National Assistance Act 1948. The Housing Bill 1977, as originally drafted, contained no provision for intentionality but the local authority lobby forced through amendments, fearing that people would jump the waiting list queue for council housing by making themselves deliberately homeless.
