Moving towards Independent Housing with Floating Support for Social Relief and Protected Housing Clients

Abstract

Samenvatting: Since 2015, Dutch municipalities have received extended responsibilities in order to realize a transition from intramural care to independent housing with floating support for clients of Social Relief and Protected Housing (WMO, 2015). Whereas there are multiple approaches to house (homeless) people, the lack of housing constrains even the best solutions (Gaetz, 2012), and thereby evictions cause an influx back to intramural settings, or the streets (Van Straaten, 2016). A close collaboration between municipalities and housing corporations, therefore, has been recommended (Wonen, C. T. B. , 2015). In order to solve wicked problems like homelessness, stakeholders collaborate in governance networks and develop governance arrangements, varying in policy, structure and management aspects (Boesveldt, 2015). A qualitative multiple case study has been conducted to research how the network’s governance arrangements can explain the realization of independent housing. Three governance networks were researched, existing of eight municipalities and seven housing corporations. Both document analysis and semi-structured interviews have been conducted to retrieve the policy and social aspects of the arrangements. In order to realize independent housing, it turns out that the following aspects are crucial: evaluating the housing demand and supply, developing housing-output-agreements, evaluating the neighborhood resilience, developing rental-triangle-contracts (involving care institutes), realizing Skaeve Huse and finally, making agreements with all stakeholders to prevent, signal and solve nuisance and debts. Housing corporations prioritize a fair housing division, good living conditions for the whole neighborhood and their income over the client. However, pluriform goals and perspectives do not have to hinder the solutions (Verweij et al., 2013). If the management involves all stakeholders, and gathers all interests and perspectives, networks can gain the capacity insights that are necessary to set realistic goals. For both policymakers as well as researchers in the field, this study provides a framework of the most important governance arrangements that can explain the transition towards independent housing.