Introduction

In recent years, across Europe, North America and the Antipodes, a significant number of countries, states and regions have devised strategies that aim to end long-term homelessness and the need to sleep rough (Parsell et al, 2012; Owen, 2015; O’Sullivan, 2017a; Lee et al, 2018). Long considered an intractable or ‘wicked’ social problem, the notion that homelessness could be ended represents a significant sea change in conceptualising and responding to homelessness, what Henwood et al (2015: 3) call a ‘fundamental shift in expectations’. The idea of ending homelessness has, in the words of Baker and Evans (2016: 25) ‘gone from politically unthinkable to politically mainstream’.

The growth in the numbers experiencing homelessness, particularly since the early to mid-1980s saw an expansion of the number of shelter beds in most cities in Europe, North America and the Antipodes, with transitional housing added later, resulting in a largely unplanned, reactionary and complex system of various forms of emergency and temporary accommodation, in many cases, with on-site or linked psychosocial supports.

Crucially, there was emerging evidence that existing service responses were not reaching some individuals whose homelessness had either been triggered by high and complex needs, or who had developed such needs in association with their homelessness becoming prolonged or recurrent. Innovations such as Critical Time Intervention and, particularly, Housing First, initially in the US, showed that this high-cost, high-risk population of people experiencing homelessness could be reached, and that their homelessness could be ended. Both an enhanced, nuanced and evidence-based understanding of homelessness and a new and more effective toolkit for ending homelessness had become available, changing the context in which policy was being developed.

In a review of over 60 plans and strategies in North America, Europe and Australia, it was noted that while there was little consistency in how ending homelessness was operationalised, the majority of plans and strategies had a broadly similar objective of ending homelessness, using a ‘functional zero’ definition. This approach recognises that an ‘absolute zero’ attempt to completely eliminate people experiencing homelessness in all circumstances at all times may not be possible, albeit that Finland, one of the countries discussed in this book, is now openly talking about achieving ‘absolute zero’. ‘