Introduction

Nowhere are the Orwellian characteristics of access laws more apparent than in the formulation and implementation of the homelessness legislation in England and Wales. Even though the UK is in the process of implementing a variant on the European Convention of Human Rights, this will not guarantee a ‘right to housing’. Indeed, talk of ‘rights’ in this context is misconceived because the homelessness legislation has “always required us to oppress the homeless by making moral judgments, not about their housing need, but about why the homeless become homeless in the first place” (Cowan, 1997a, p 21). The homelessness legislation, therefore, provides a shroud which legitimates the exclusion of substantial numbers from housing.

The importance of morality, both within the legislation as well as to its interpretation, should not shock us. The rationale for the harshness of the Poor Law regime(s) was that those who required state support were, in some way, undeserving. Under one version of this legislation, undeservingness was part of the public humiliation of poverty – recipients of Poor Law relief were forced to wear the letter ‘P’ on the right shoulder of their uppermost garment (Cranston, 1985, pp 34-43). With this in mind, it is surely significant that the two defining periods in the making of the modern homelessness legislation – 1976-77 (culminating with the 1977 Housing (Homeless Persons) Act) and 1993-96 (1996 Housing Act, Parts VI and VII) – have taken place against a backdrop of a broader societal concern about the relationship between the creation of, and response to, poverty. Parliamentary debates surrounding the 1977 Act must be read in the context of the “extensive and hysterical” media coverage of the case of Derek Deevy, the supposed “King Con” of a broader problem of welfare scroungerphobia (Golding and Middleton, 1982, p 61).