Meeting a growing homelessness: How could three Swedish affordable housing initiatives be analysed from perspectives of social and economic sustainability?

Homelessness has increased substantially in Sweden in the last decade with an emphasis on structural homelessness. Further, municipalities have the responsibility to house a certain number of newly arrived immigrants under the Settlement Act. Many municipalities have had difficulties in meeting the acute housing need, as well as its costs, and have started to look at new types of housing solutions. Initiatives of the civil society and private developers have been encouraged. This paper investigates three civil society and private housing developments and how they might contribute to socially and economically sustainable housing solutions for households in or on the verge to homelessness. In order to operationalize social and economic sustainability in relation to these local projects, a definition and an analytical set of questions have been developed based on the literature and project data. It is concluded that all three projects are socially and economically sustainable at the outset, but that certain traits of the project set-ups make them more uncertain in the longer run. The concept of sustainability proved fruitful in analysing the projects, but in many cases, non-physical factors will be person dependent and therefore difficult to generalise. As it is expected that this new type of housing in the Swedish setting will increase in numbers, the definition and analytical set of questions should be tested in relation to more projects and be developed further.