Growth, Range, and Variation of Actors within Local Housing Services for Persons Living in Homelessness in Sweden, 2011–2018

Abstract

In Sweden, as in many European countries, the involvement of for-profit and non-profit actors in complex welfare services such as housing services for persons living in homelessness has raised concerns regarding contradictory aims, quality control and a lack of insight into publicly financed services. This paper uses data from Statistics Sweden Business Register to explore how housing services for persons living in homelessness were expanded and changed from 2011 to 2018 as well as how they varied between different types of municipalities. The analysis explores how these factors relate to the number of persons who receive housing due to homelessness as well as the threshold for entry to local rental housing markets across Swedish municipalities. Preliminary findings suggest that there is a mix of for-profit and non-profit actors involved in homeless housing services and that municipalities are still a major provider of services in Sweden. The results suggest that the availability of housing through public housing companies positively affects the number of actors involved in local housing services for persons living in homelessness. As a case study, these results could provide useful insights for cross-national European comparative research of the changes and effects of different types of actors’ involvement in the local housing services for persons living in homelessness.

Keywords

• homelessness
• welfare providers
• social services
• municipalities
• quantitative methods
• bostedsløshet