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Marginally housed or marginally homeless?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2022

Emma Laurie
Emma Laurie*
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Law, School of Law, University of Southampton, UK
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The English homelessness scheme has been lauded as being one of the most progressive in the world for offering an individually legally enforceable right to housing to those people who meet the statutory criteria. Its definition of homelessness is also liberal by comparison with many other countries within Europe and beyond, extending significantly beyond the stereotypical rooflessness experienced by rough sleepers. Nevertheless, the scheme is highly selective and targeted, and assesses homelessness through a test of relative need, rather than enshrining a minimally acceptable standard of housing. It thereby creates a category of the marginally housed whose housing needs are assessed as insufficiently poor to be officially categorised as homeless, yet who are living in severely inadequate housing. To reduce the uncertainty and contingency of the current test, the paper proposes the adoption of a new test of habitability.

Keywords

homelessnesssocial policyhabitabilityEngland
Type
Special Issue Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 18 , Special Issue 1: Marginalisation in Law, Policy and Society , March 2022 , pp. 69 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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