Social policies are, in fact, a very important concept for modern societies. They need to be understood as the study of the necessary social relations for human wellbeing, and the systems through which this wellbeing is promoted.[1] It affects different fields, but primarily health, social care, education and housing. But does that mean that states which promote social policies need to cover all these elements to society as a whole? With what criteria is the State paying more or less attention to its citizens? And what’s more, are all States equally promoting these social policies?
Nowadays the majority of States are obliged to provide a minimum set of services to their citizens. Those States are commonly called welfare states and they are characterized by their special role in terms of protection and promotion of its citizen’s wellbeing, both from the economic and the social perspective. But what does wellbeing mean? For some States, it means to provide services in order to protect people from certain dangers, and for others, wellbeing only entails economic assistance to the poor.
All these social policies are associated to an increase of the people’s wellbeing, but what happens with the homeless? Having a home is an essential and indispensable element in order to live with dignity. Nevertheless, when analyzing the necessary social policies to be undertaken, this is hardly spoken of. It is usual to hear people speak about education or health, but who is there to represent the needs of the homeless, those whose only home is the street?
According to RAIS (2010), it is estimated that in Europe there are three million people who do not have a home. This shows an important lack of wellbeing and dignified living conditions. When speaking about poverty and inequality, people tend to have in mind the third world countries or they tend to think about different economic classes within our society. But only rarely people take into account what inequality supposes, and this should not be the case, since we should see it from our day to day perspective and not as a far away problem. This is because homeless people are a proof of the problems of our society and of poverty in the world and in our environment.
The policies that have been carried out in order to combat the problem of homelessness, a problem not very important for some but essential to others, have not proved to be useful when improving the living conditions of these people. What’s more, in some cases, there have been contradictory measures in order to stop these situations. In Hungary, for example, the city hall of Budapest passed a legislation consisting on the prohibition of living in public spaces. This entailed that individuals who were homeless and living in the street were sanctioned, forced to provide community services, or sent to prison. The aim of this measure, according to the polititians, was to ensure wellbeing of those people by enabling public homes that homeless people could sleep in. This generated a lot of controversy and many demonstrations were made in front of the Budapest parliament, due to what citizens believed to be a lack of proper measures to deal with the issue and a lack of good conditions offered by the State.Moreover, many of the people affected by this legislation alleged that they preferred to continue living in the street in order to fight against this situation. They preferred so because what the government was offering them was nothing more than looking for citizens’ security and this could suppose some kind of conflict. It is for this reason that the government promoted the public homes and habilitated buildings for these people to be able to sleep, a good way, in my opinion, to hide the real problem and to pretend that there are less homeless people in front of this policy aparently beneficiary for them.
But with László Andraschek’s appearance on the newspapers, it was publicly demonstrated that unless one does not go through such a dramatic situation himself, that is, having to live on the streets, there will be no public concern to promote new iniciatives to combat the problem. László Andraschek was a homeless person until he won 1,7 million pounds in the lottery, according to the newspaper The Guardian. He made a big contribution to a hostal for homeless people and he started a project to found a new entitity for drug addicts and victims of gender violence. This lead to a new wave of demonstrations against the hungarian law, and there are about 30.000 homeless people promoting this complaint in cities like London, New York, Paris or Brussels. But demonstrations aside, without being truly conscious of the problem and without taking efficent measures to combat it, homeless people will keep on existing and will never be able to access a dignified living. It is not enough to count on civic organisations, which offer social housing, but a more proactive approach needs to be adopted: to provide dignified housing for all. This initiative needs to be promoted from within top polititians groups.
However, it needs to be highlighted that this situation does not only affect Hungary, but also the majority of States in the world. The most worrying fact is that nowadays there are thousands of empty homes due to the increasing amount of evictions that have taken place during the last few years. This is why we can affirm that there is a solution, but due to economic interests and the losses that can take place when promoting social policies to combat poverty, we do nothing to stop this situation.
This is why people who are living on the streets today will continue to do so tomorrow due to the never ending trap that it supposes. When one does not have a dignified housing, getting a job can be a challenge, and, therefore, income to pay for housing will not exist. The solution is not in the hands of social entities which fight against this situation but it is in the hands of politicians and the social policies they develop. The current situation will be difficult to defreeze unless people take conscience of the situation and we stop ignoring those whom we see sleeping in the streets. In view of this situation we must ask ourselves; does the welfare State truly promote the wellbeing of everybody? Or does it only promote the wellbeing of those who are interested in politics in order to keep their voters satisfied?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SAMPLE, D. “What about social policy?”
http://www.homelessworldcup.org/content/homelessness-statistics
http://www.economist.com/topics/homelessness
http://www.theguardian.com/world/
[1] SAMPLE, D. “What about social policy?”
Social Policy UPF 