Polish National Action Plan for Social Integration 2004-2006 mentions homeless people among four groups most vulnerable to social exclusion: Homelessness is the most extreme form of exclusion (…) and like in other countries it is accompanied by mental illness, disability, lack of job, crime and other.
 

From both policy and research perspectives homelessness as phenomenon is not easy to define. The group of activists working in various European non-profit agencies dealing with homelessness in cooperation with researchers from the European Observatory of Homelessness constructed a conceptual definition and operational typology of the phenomenon.

According to the conceptual definition there are three domains which constitute a ‘home’: physical, legal and social. The physical domain means shelter from unwelcome weather conditions like cold, rain, winds etc., the legal domain means stability in legal terms like possessing legal title to inhabited apartment, and the social domain means ability to perform social roles within it like marriage, having and bringing up children, securing privacy etc. Exclusion from any of the domains causes homelessness or housing exclusion which are two basic forms of one phenomenon. To give some examples: a family of farmers possesses a small house in the rural area. It is big enough to provide shelter for parents and their children. Parents are legal owners as they have inherited the house from their ancestors. However, the father is an offender: he uses violence in his relations with the family. Therefore, this family would be referred to as homeless or threatened with homelessness (according to different national legislations) as mother and children are excluded from the social domain, even though they have a ‘roof over their heads’ and their legal situation is secured by ownership regulations.

The most extreme form of homelessness is exclusion from all three domains which is experienced by people referred to as ‘rough sleepers’ or living in ‘inhabitable spaces’ like railway stations, sewage systems, abandoned buildings, etc. They have hardly any protection from bad weather and are deprived of any legal titles to spaces they stay at. They also do not have their own private space to develop social relationships.

Analysis of various situations cased by some combination of exclusion from three domains is concluded by establishing four major conceptual categories: roofless and houseless referred to as HOMELESSNESS and insecure and inadequate housing referred to as HOUSING EXCLUSION (although the dividing line between homelessness and housing exclusion varies from country to country). Both homelessness and housing exclusion are perceived as categories of one phenomenon.

In order to enable more practical application of the conceptual attitude, it was broken down into an Operational Typology of Homelessness and Housing Exclusion named ETHOS . It consists of thirteen different types of homelessness or housing exclusion described by operational category and generic definitions (Table 1.) for each of them. While the conceptual and operational categories of ETHOS are robust and remain the basis for the typology, the generic definitions of the typology are still being tested on national levels and reviewed by the European Observatory on Homelessness.

Table 1. Conceptual and operational categories of homelessness and housing exclusion.

The recognition of thirteen types of homelessness and housing exclusion proves that the phenomenon should be treated as a continuum of different ‘housing situations’ that people might find themselves in during their lifetime. Any policy to alleviate any type should consider it as part of the bigger phenomenon. Support for rough sleepers cannot be an effective means of tackling homelessness unless processes of eviction and overcrowding are recognized and addressed.
 

One of the major purposes of ETHOS creation was to enhance international comparative analysis of the phenomenon which was previously not possible due to differences in national attitudes to data collection as well as huge gaps in existing systems (there are countries where hardly any data on homelessness is available except from numbers for small local communities and clients of certain institution) . Homelessness is difficult to capture by massive statistics regarding big populations (inhabitants of the whole country) – homeless households are usually not included in data sources that are used for drawing the samples for majority of surveys (e.g. household surveys). They are also missed by general population censuses – during 2002 Population and Housing Census in Poland enumerators were sent to the shelters and inhabitable places, but their effectiveness was so low, that Central Statistical Office has never published any results.

In Poland, major data sources used for estimating the scale of poverty fail to describe the situation of the homeless by inability to include them in the research samples. It regards Household Budget Surveys (pl. badania budżetów gospodartw domowych), Living Conditions of People Survey by GUS (pl. Badania warunków życia ludności), Social Diagnosis (pl. Diagnoza społeczna), social opinion polls (pl. sondażowe badania opinii publicznej) as well as registers of social welfare clients operated by the Ministry of Social Welfare . It is legitimate to conclude, that poverty indicators fail to describe conditions of the most impoverished group of the society which is an obvious failure of the methodology. ETHOS was constructed as an alternative tool to fill the gap. It has been tested since 2003 on annual basis by National Correspondents of European Observatory of FEANTSA, trying to apply it to national definitions and data collection procedures.

In Poland it has been tested since 2005, and proved to be especially useful in defining service gap in provision for people excluded from the three domains as well as for revealing a narrow understanding of homelessness that thrives in policy design and implementation.

Thirteen types of ETHOS present a much broader understanding of the issue than Polish terminology would suggest. It is not the purpose of this article to revise existing definitions of homelessness especially that there are many of them and differences can be observed between researchers . However, there are four major terms used in Poland that can have certain ETHOS types prescribed (Table 2):

Table 2. ETHOS types and Polish terminology

Besides the above theoretical comparison, on policy design and implementation level issues of housing for low income families and issues of homelessness are separated and not dealt with as interconnected problems. Solutions for people in shelters are not looked for within the housing system, rather through programmes of supported employment, social cooperatives and social integration initiatives. Housing programmes (like social tennement housing, communal housing) are dedicated to serve people living in overcrowded and substitute housing conditions. Social housing is granted as punishment (degrading housing quality) for people with notorious antisocial behaviors (loud parties, alcoholism) and rent debts. It is rather not thought of as support option for people “graduating” from shelters for the homeless.

Polish terminology used to describe the phenomenon of homelessness and housing exclusion mirrors divisions established on the level of service provision. The homeless, homeless ‘sensu stricto’, potentially homeless and housing deprived people are subject of separate policies and support programmes. The following section gives a brief description of the system for the first two categories.

A support system for the homeless and homeless ‘sensu stricto’ is developed mostly by non-governmental service providers (running warming up rooms, night shelters, shelters, soup kitchens, advisory services, washing rooms and social work programmes) in cooperation with local government that co-funds part of their activity based on the regulations of Social Welfare Act . NGOs organize substantial support from private sponsors (food, furniture, construction materials, etc.) and agendas of other levels of public administration (vioivodship government, Ministry of Labor) as well as structural funds of European Union. Based on Polish Statistical Updates from 2005 and 2006 the system can be characterised by following conclusions:

• The majority of service providers are non-profit organizations: 80% of (night)shelters and 86% of stock are provided by ngos; 50% of (night)shelters are run by non-network organizations other than CARITAS, TPBA, MONAR and they provide 40% of stock.
• Lack of transitional, supported services (contract and training apartments, supported living in social housing apartments), although some projects based on multi-sector cooperation appear (Wolski Program Reintegracji Społecznej ‘Druga Szansa’).
• There are no standards for services, although two initiatives came up recently (Caritas Kielecka, Pomorskie Forum).
• Reintegration is undertaken rather through supported employment (local activation centres, social enterprises) than through housing for low income and specialist support needs people.

Although, there is no single national study allowing for description of overall homeless population of Poland, two studies can be cited, with their constraints taken into account, to give overview of characteristics of the homeless (sensu stricto included). None of the studies allows for direct comparison of results with the ETHOS structure, although some efforts have been made by Pomeranian Forum.

Table 3. Basic characteristics of the homeless population in Poland

According to FEANTSA homelessness and housing exclusion are one phenomenon that can be broken down into thirteen different housing situations creating continuum. Operational Typology ETHOS with its generic definitions prescribed to each type enable international comparative analysis which may fill the gap in data collection systems on the most excluded groups of societies. In Poland understanding of homelessness is constrained to people who are roofless and houseless as defined by ETHOS. Although the problem of potential homelessness is noticed, there are no policies addressing it. Housing exclusion is considered to be a separate issue referred to as housing deprivation, difficult housing conditions, etc. As a consequence we observe a lack of services helping people to move from homelessness into housing and on the other side lack of prevention from housing exclusion.