Established in 1990, this groundbreaking research partnership on housing and homelessness between the Universities of Dundee and St Andrews has matured into a research unit with a team of more than 30 people under the direction of Bill Edgar in Town and Regional Planning and Joe Doherty from the School of Geography in St Andrews University. The Joint Centre's current research focuses on the analysis of social housing and support provision in England and Scotland and homelessness in the EU.
The Joint Centre is the hub for housing data from every home rented from a housing association and is now extending the scope of its analysis to include data on social housing from local authorities. Bill and Joe's team produce periodic assessment of rent affordability, dependency ratios (proportion of households in receipt of housing and other benefits) and examine the role of social housing in providing for households in need.
Bill explains: "Our data shows that single and low income families have problems affording rent. We can accurately establish what proportion of households rely on housing benefit and what proportion of working households pay more than 25% of their income on rent (which we take to be the affordable level). If a household's income after rent leaves them in poverty then the rent level is too much. This analysis can, of course, also identify regional inequalities".
Following the enactment of the Supporting People programme in April this year, the Joint Centre has been commissioned by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, to collect and analyse the provision of support to individual clients. The Joint Centre's research will facilitate an assessment of the success of the programme and permit adjustments in funding and provision in relation to need.
In addition to these large scale surveys, the Joint Centre also undertakes research for local authorities and other bodies. For example, a research report prepared by Bill and his colleagues has just been published, by Scottish Women's Aid, on the difficulties that women who have experienced domestic abuse face in finding and retaining a new tenancy.
Having published four in a series of five studies on homelessness in Europe, Bill and Joe are poised to publish the last in the series on the topic of Immigration and Homelessness. The research for the book has been conducted in all 15 EU countries with each country writing a report on their national situation to contribute to the European Observatory on Homelessness. Bill and Joe have compiled the reports and will publish in March 2004.
The European study has found that in some big cities as many as 60% of homeless service users are immigrants. This creates problems of managing these services to meet new needs and deal with conflicts which can occur. It also suggests the need for new services to meet the needs of, for example, immigrant women. The evidence also suggests that 'second generation' immigrants are more vulnerable to homelessness. This highlights the need for policy to be more focused on strategies of integration of immigrants to prevent homelessness.
Further information can be found at the Joint Centre's web sites:
www.core.ac.uk
www.scoreonline.org.uk
www.feantsa.org/research