Right to housing? : About the work to deal with acute homelessness within housing provision with a focus on Umeå.

During 2022 the Swedish government announced a new strategy to combat homelessness. As the population is growing faster than housing construction there is a noticeable housing crisis in Sweden in terms of housing shortage. This means that more households risk ending up outside the housing market and becoming homeless. With the new strategy, the work of national and local authorities is expected to change. The aim of this study is to describe how national and local authorities manage acute homelessness within housing provision. Furthermore, the study intends to analyze and discuss challenges in dealing with acute homelessness in housing provision. To fulfil the aim, empirical material was collected through qualitative interview studies with people at national and local authorities in the capacity of their professional role. The results show that there are multiple difficulties in the work towards dealing with homelessness in housing provision in terms of strategies and cooperation between national and local authorities. This is partly a result of Sweden’s large multi-level system where responsibilities and duties are distributed across several different authorities. This is to some extent a consequence of unclearly formulated strategies, unclear division of responsibilities and small resources. Further, this makes it hard to get an overall picture of the extent of the problem and what can and should be done in the future. Some of these difficulties can be communicated and coordinated, while others are dependent of housing policy and market forces, which is difficult to influence. In the future, authorities and the population face great uncertainty. But there are clear ambitions with the strategy Bostad först being the foremost. This indicates a strong drive forward nationally and locally towards a more developed and socially sustainable housing provision