Housing quality and homelessness among people who beg

Abstract

The poverty literature often overlooks the relationship between housing insecurity and income-generating activities. The often informal sources of income among the homeless strongly connect to other aspects of their lives. Nonetheless, these groups of severely deprived people are often missing from large-scale studies and official statistics. Using an original and comprehensive survey, we document the complex interaction between living conditions and begging, a most visible form of extreme poverty and a central concern for urban planning and social assistance. We interviewed 358 people who were begging between 2021 and 2022 in Brussels. We estimate that approximately 80% of them are Romanian Roma. Our findings suggest that around half of the people who beg sleep rough, while some occupy relatively insecure and low-quality dwellings. Further differences relate to gender and ethnicity, with women and those with children more often seen in emergency accommodations and non-conventional dwellings and Romanian Roma occupying, on average, more problematic housing.