Homelessness: its social and economic causes and effects

With Professor Nicholas Pleace. Despite increased policy attention, and the implementation of strategies to halt it, homelessness is on the rise in most European states and remains at stubbornly high levels across developed nations. Its adverse effects on mental and physical health, crime levels, substance abuse, and general wellbeing are profound, and it is urgently necessary to devise means that will bring it to an end. Professor Nicholas Pleace is a globally recognised authority on homelessness. He is Director of the Centre for Housing Policy, the University of York Research Champion for Justice and Equality, and holds a Chair in Social Policy at York. His work centres on comparative research, particularly across Europe and the Anglophone countries, and on transdisciplinary research that encompasses inequalities in health, life chances/opportunity and area effects in urban space with a particular focus on housing precarity and homelessness. He has led research for numerous international governmental and non-governmental organisations, and is a member of the European Observatory on homelessness, and of the Women’s Homelessness in Europe Network. He is also on the Editorial Boards of the European Journal of Homelessness and the International Journal of Housing Policy, and has written very widely on the subject of homelessness, one of his most recent publications being Ending Homelessness? The Contrasting Experiences of Ireland, Denmark and Finland (2020).