Join this session as we kick off our final week of the conference, which focuses on homelessness. This session features two papers considering the important role of decision-making. The full abstracts are below.
Presentations from these authors and a live Q&A session are available to all HSA members. Book here
1. Jenny Pennington Who decides? Intentional homelessness decision making in a time of austerity
In 2019, Ms Terry-Ann Samuels won her eight-year legal battle against Birmingham City Council. The council had found her to be ‘intentionally homeless’ as they determined that she could make up the substantial shortfall between her housing benefit and rent from other benefits. The case put ‘intentionality’ decisions under the microscope. It exposed how previously routine decision-making around ‘intentionality’ has become a focus of interaction between decisions made by central government, local government, and individual housing officers. Examining it raises questions around whether devolution of power is improving lives, and how new models of delivery are being constructed in the absence of clear central government command. The presentation will draw on research completed for Ms Samuels’ legal case that maps the impact of a decade of central government decision making on social security spending, and shows how it has fallen unevenly across the country, leaving most claimants in a situation where rents are ‘unaffordable’ on housing benefit. It will also present findings of a research study into how local authorities have responded within this new environment. The research finds wide diversity in the way local authorities define affordability and a decision-making framework that charged individual officers within local authorities with making subjective decisions that had a major impact on vulnerable people’s lives. We will also discuss how housing research can be used in this ‘applied’ legal context, how it was used in the courts decision making, and what this represents as another locus of power within housing and homelessness decisions.
2. Philippa Watkin Discretion in Keyworker Decision Making: Ensuring compliance and engagement through the use of social control in supported accommodation
Despite increased interest in alternative accommodation provision for homeless individuals, such as Housing First, local authorities are still heavily reliant on staircase based models of supported accommodation that aim to progressively transition individuals into permanent accommodation. Funding requirements and institutional policies often require ongoing resident engagement with support and compliance with service rules. Keyworkers therefore attempt to ensure this engagement and compliance through the encouragement of desired behaviour and discouragement of undesirable behaviour. This paper examines the ways in which keyworkers use their discretion to enact various forms of social control in their attempts to produce compliance and engagement from residents. Drawing on PhD field work data from Scotland focussing on young people living in supported accommodation services, this paper identifies the means of social control employed and the impact of keyworker discretion on the occurrence and formation of these enactments. This paper will draw attention to the conflicting roles occupied by keyworkers as both supportive confidant and enforcer of service rules. It will conclude by discussing how keyworkers reconcile and justify their actions within this context with their motivation for working in the sector, and understanding of the challenge residents face in complying.