Homelessness Policies in the Liberal and the Southern European Welfare Regimes: Ireland, Portugal, and Greece

ABSTRACT

This article compares homelessness policies in representative countries of the liberal and Southern European welfare regimes: Ireland, Portugal, and Greece. These are countries where austerity policies were implemented by the Troika during the crisis. After a brief review of the literature on welfare regimes and homelessness, the characteristics of homelessness policies in the liberal and Southern European model are studied. Subsequently, using the scholarly bibliography, research reports, and primary data, homelessness policies in the three countries are compared. In terms of methodology, this is achieved by developing three axes of analysis: the historical development of homelessness policies, the impact of austerity policies on the deterioration of homelessness, and the characteristics of the homelessness policies being developed during the crisis. It is established that the three countries consolidate a residual model of social intervention that fails to adequately address increasing homelessness.

KEYWORDS:

• welfare regimes
• Ireland
• Portugal
• Greece
• crisis

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In the initial version of this article, references to the three case studies (Ireland, Portugal, Greece) were equally distributed. In its final/published version, the analysis of the three countries was slightly imbalanced, which was developed according to some of the comments made by the anonymous reviewers.

2. Another part of the scholarly literature claims that the Southern European welfare state is a bad application of the corporatist welfare regime (Katrougalos, 1996).

3. PASS is an online shared system utilized by every homeless service provider and all local authorities in Ireland. See https://www.homelessdublin.ie/info/pass

4. These figures do not include Croatia.

5. The ETHOS typology classifies four main concepts of homelessness: rooflessness, houselessness, insecure housing, and inadequate housing. These conceptual categories are divided into 13 operational categories that can be used for different policy purposes such as mapping of the problem of homelessness, developing, monitoring, and evaluating policies. See https://www.feantsa.org/download/en-16822651433655843804.pdf

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nikos Kourachanis

Nikos Kourachanis is a Postdoctoral Fellow of Social Policy at Panteion University of Athens. His research interests focus on social policies for vulnerable groups, such as homeless, migrants, and refugees. He is the author of the books Homelessness and Social Exclusion in Crisis Greece (Topos, 2017 with Professor Despina Papadopoulou), Homelessness Policies (Papazisis, 2017), Refugee Housing Policies (Topos, 2019) and Housing and Society (Dionicos, Ed., 2019). He teaches Social Policy at Panteion University.