Contested Landscapes of Homelessness in Athens

Winners of the 2020 Jim Lewis Prize

“…Finally, our case study, the city of Athens, adopted a complacent stance towards austerity, recognizing no alternatives to cuts and prudent budgeting, and effectuated change in the role and orientation of the local level by admitting likeminded ‘elite’ partners into the policymaking process. The neoliberal qualities of this rescaling process are evident in the surge of privatizations, exclusionary networks and the deregulatory traits of the policies pursued – their apparent failure in the economic downturn and the social plight they triggered locally (Arapoglou and Gounis, 2017). They are underscored, however, by the active role of the state, in three different regulatory scales, and in setting itself and civil society for the market.…”

Southern European welfare states and homelessness: Portugal and Greece

“…The global economic recession of 2008 has been a second phase for the acceleration of neo-liberal policies, reorienting social policy objectives toward focusing on a residual management of the rise in extreme poverty. These neo-liberal reforms have established a model of social emergency management (Arapoglou and Gounis, 2017). At the same time, housing problems have been getting worse.…”

“…Trends such as the development of integrated homelessness strategies (Benjaminsen and Dyb, 2010), which prioritize autonomous housing, are also being adopted with tentative steps in the European South. Nonetheless, these schemes are hampered by the limited provision of public housing, the numerous eligibility criteria and conditions, and low allowances (Arapoglou and Gounis, 2017, pp. 28-33).…”

Exceptional Social Housing in a Residual Welfare State: Housing Estates in Athens, Greece

“…New property-less groups have been increasingly present with increased difficulty to emulate the local dominant housing model in a period when access to homeownership becomes increasingly unequal in terms of class. Homelessness-which was marginal during the post-war period-has been rising (Arapoglou and Gounis 2018) and the most deprived groups-usually combining the lowest category in the occupational hierarchy (routine occupations) with an ethnic identity related to subaltern social positions-have been relegated to the worst part of the private rented sector. As a result, the latter have been experiencing acute housing issues-enhanced by the effect of the sovereign debt crisis which increased unemployment and poverty and by the new refugee crisis from Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan-and are increasingly concentrated in particular neighbourhoods in the city centre and part of the periphery, creating potentially new spaces of segregation.…”