Examining recent strategies to combat long-term homelessness, the article looks at two social policy reforms implemented in a Swedish municipality. The first of these involved dismantling of the existing hostel system and its replacement with the ‘housing staircase’ model. The second meant the end of the housing staircase model and the engagement of private for-profit companies in the municipal special-housing service provision. By incorporating the new actors within its homeless policy framework, however, the municipality has merely adjusted its approach to accommodate a practice already followed on the ground to legitimize an existing situation. The reforms resulted in revisions to official policy and organizational structures, while actual practices remained unaffected. As a result, little has changed in the situation of the long-term homeless. Regardless of the type of service supplier (municipal, for profit or non-profit), measures to counteract homelessness in Sweden have remained dependent on a general premise equating homelessness with addiction, mental illness and deviance more broadly. Alternatives based on access to regular housing are not even debated, despite the success such approaches have had elsewhere.
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