Social and structural homelessness : A problem-based study of Malmö Municipality's strategy regarding homelessness

The purpose of this study is to examine Malmö Municipality’s strategies regarding counteracting social and structural homelessness, by describing and comparing the strategic differences between the two categories. We will do this mainly by performing a problem-based policy analysis of three municipal documents regarding the city’s homelessness problem. We will also be performing a theoretical analysis based on Ian Gough’s marxist analysis of the welfare state and institutional theory, respectively. Through our analysis on the municipal policy we have found that structural homelessness is a problem that is prioritized in comparison to social homelessness. This is because of a large increase in the structurally homeless population during the past decade. However, the problem of social homelessness has far more concrete measures to counteract it. This is found through our theoretical analysis to be due to several factors. One of these factors is that structural homelessness is more deeply entwined with the housing market, which affects the difficulty with creating appropriate measures. Another factor is path dependency, which means that structural homlessness as a newer problem affects the municipality’s ability to apply drastic measures. Our conclusion is that Malmö municipality prioritizes solving the problem of social homelessness through concrete measures, even though structural homelessness is seen as a larger problem. This is because of the complex nature of structural homelessness and the difficulty in applying the correct measures