Revisiting the 1977 Housing (Homeless Persons) Act: Westminster, Whitehall, and the Homelessness Lobby

The 1977 Housing (Homeless Persons) Act provided the first statutory definition of homelessness. This article examines who should be credited with inspiring the legislation. This article shows that the homelessness lobby, co-ordinating their activities through the Joint Charities Group and Campaign for the Homeless and Roofless, interposed themselves between Whitehall and Parliament and the public, mediating a message about the changing nature of 'hidden' homelessness and its growing scale. At the same time elements of the civil service, particularly within the Department of Environment, sought to harness this lobby in order to help promote its agenda for improving the utilization of, and uniformity of access to, the housing stock within Britain. 'Shelter has failed. It set out, 10 years ago in the wake of the horror of Cathy Come Home to fight the blight of homelessness in Britain. In that time, on the roughest available statistics, homelessness has not declined, it has doubled.' 1 This stinging rebuke for one of Britain's most high- profile homelessness NGOs explains the key difficulty facing those campaigning on behalf of the roofless found themselves facing in the mid-1970s. It appeared that despite all the anxiety that these groups had stirred up amongst public opinion, policymakers were largely unmoved. Indeed, legislative change, such as the 1972 Local Government Act and the 1974 Housing Act, appeared to be diminishing the obligations of the state towards the homeless.