British Public Policy and the Health of Homeless People

Abstract

There is growing concern among policy makers and the public about the well-documented increase in homelessness in late twentieth century Britain. This concern is fuelled by accumulating evidence that homelessness is hazardous to health, and by the discovery that homeless people often have limited access to primary medical care. There are, moreover, many very real ways in which homelessness is a public health issue and a source of health inequalities. Nevertheless, the aim of this paper is to argue that the health profile of homeless people is substantially a housing issue: one whose urgency may be compromised by the increasing tendency to ‘medicalise’ the problem of homelessness and health.