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CHAPTER THREE: GENERAL ATTITUDES TO HOMELESS PEOPLE

Introduction and background

3.1 One of the key aims of the Awareness Raising and Best Practice subgroup is to advise on the measurement of attitudes towards people experiencing homelessness and any changes in these attitudes over time. To inform this aim, the 2006 Scottish Social Attitudes survey included a number of statements designed to explore the degree to which people hold attitudes which could broadly be described as 'sympathetic' or which are more 'critical' or 'unsympathetic' towards homeless people. We asked people how strongly they agreed or disagreed with the following statements:

• Most homeless people have just been unlucky in their lives.
• Most homeless people could find somewhere to live if they really tried.
• Many people say they are homeless just to try and get a house from the council.

3.2 Believing that homeless people have just been unlucky suggests that they are not viewed as completely responsible for the difficult situation in which they find themselves - thus agreement with the first statement can be seen as expressing a broadly 'sympathetic' attitude towards homeless people. Thinking that homeless people could find somewhere to live if they 'really tried' or that many ' say they are homeless just to try and get a house from the council', on the other hand, suggests a more judgemental attitude towards the behaviour and motives of people experiencing homelessness. Thus agreement with the second and third statements suggests a broadly 'unsympathetic' or more 'critical' view. This chapter uses data for these statements to address the following key questions:

Key questions

• How 'sympathetic' or 'unsympathetic' are public attitudes towards people experiencing homelessness in general?
• How do attitudes vary across different groups of people in Scotland?

General levels of sympathy towards people experiencing homelessness

3.3 Figure 3.1, below, shows the extent of agreement or disagreement with each of the statements listed above. The findings suggest that the issue of homelessness divides people. For example, while half (48%) agree that ' most homeless people have just been unlucky in their lives', over a quarter (28%) disagree while 2 in 10 (22%) neither agree nor disagree. Thus while half the population appear broadly sympathetic towards homeless people on this measure, half appear either unsympathetic or undecided in their views (although as discussed below, other interpretations of disagreement with this statement are possible).

3.4 In relation to the other two statements, views are similarly divided although arguably slightly more negative. For example, while 29% disagree that 'many people say they are homeless just to try and get a house from the council', 35% agree with this statement and 28% neither agree nor disagree. Thus around two thirds of people appear to be either suspicious or undecided about the motives of many people who present as homeless. Similarly, while 33% disagree that 'most homeless people could find somewhere to live if they really tried', 45% agree with this statement, suggesting that many people may believe homeless people could do more to help themselves out of their situation.

Figure 3.1 General attitudes to homelessness¹¹

Base: Statement A and B = 1,594 (all respondents), statement C = 1,437 (all respondents who completed the self-completion questionnaire)

3.5 The fact that the second two statements appear to attract more negative responses than the first raises the question of whether or not the three statements are all measuring broadly the same kind of 'sympathy' towards homeless people. One explanation of the difference in responses to the three statements may be that people are sympathetic in one respect but not in others. For example, people may be broadly sympathetic to the reasons people become homeless in the first instance, perhaps viewing homeless people as simply victims of circumstance (or 'luck'). However, they may express less sympathetic attitudes when asked about how people behave once they are homeless - for example because they feel they are not trying hard enough to help themselves. The third statement, may be tapping somewhat different beliefs about whether or not people think that all homeless applicants are in fact 'genuinely' homeless, or whether some have other motivations for saying they are homeless. By implication, some people may reserve their sympathy for those they consider 'genuinely' homeless, and be more critical of people they believe not to be homeless at all.

3.6 Further, although individual responses to these questions are related, the relationship is far from perfect. It is perfectly possible to be sympathetic towards homeless people in one respect but not another. For example, among those who agree that ' most homeless people could find somewhere to live if they really tried' (the least sympathetic position on this measure), 44% also agree that 'most homeless people have just been unlucky' (the most sympathetic position on that measure - see Table 3.1).

Table 3.1 Belief that most homeless people could find somewhere to live if they really tried BY Belief that most homeless people have just been unlucky in their lives¹²

3.7 These findings suggest that people's general attitudes towards homelessness and homeless people are complex. It is not possible to simply amalgamate 'sympathetic' views on one measure with 'sympathetic' views on another to provide an overall measure of attitudes to homeless people. Rather, people's degree of sympathy may vary in relation to their differing beliefs about how people become homeless in the first place (and the role 'luck' which played in this), their beliefs about whether homeless people could help themselves out of their situation and their beliefs about whether all people who present as homeless are 'genuinely' homeless or not.

3.8 In the remainder of this chapter, we explore how attitudes vary across different groups in Scotland. We will examine whether differences in responses to our three attitudinal statements can be explained by any (or all) of the following:

• socio-demographic factors (for example, sex, age, class and education)
• experience of homelessness (either personal experience or someone the respondent knows having been homeless) and how often people come across someone they think is homeless ¹³
• underlying social and political attitudes (in particular, how liberal or authoritarian a person is and how left-wing or right-wing their views are)

Analysis techniques

3.9 Our discussion of the findings in this section is informed by logistic regression analysis. Logistic regression is a statistical technique used to summarise the relationship between a 'dependent' variable (in this case holding an 'unsympathetic' or more 'critical' attitude to people experiencing homelessness) and one or more 'independent' explanatory variables (for example, sex, age, personal experience of homelessness, etc). It is particularly useful when explanatory variables are likely to be related to each other (for example, education, income and class), since it takes the relationships between these into account in determining which are statistically significant. We identify those factors most strongly associated with holding 'sympathetic' or 'unsympathetic' attitudes on each of our measures (as identified by this regression analysis) in our discussion. Further details of these regression models are included in Annex C.

Demographic factors

3.10 Socio-demographic factors, like sex, age, education and income, are often associated with considerable differences in attitudes. For example, in their chapter in the 17 ^th British Social Attitudes Report (Jowell et al (eds.), 2000) on 'Begging as a challenge to the welfare state', Adler, Bromley and Rosie found that views about begging varied by: sex (women were more sympathetic than men); age (younger people were more understanding than older people); income (those on higher incomes were more sympathetic than those on low incomes); and education (those educated to higher education level or above were more understanding than those with no qualifications).

Sex and Age

3.11 Women give more 'sympathetic' responses than men on the first two of our three attitude statements - they are more likely to agree that 'most homeless people have just been unlucky in their lives' (53%, compared with 42% of men) and less likely to agree that 'most homeless people could find somewhere to live if they really tried' (41%, compared with 51% of men). However, they are no more or less likely than men to believe that 'many people say they are homeless just to try to get a house from the council' (Table 3.2).

Table 3.2 Attitudes to homeless people BY sex

3.12 Age is significantly related to the second of our three statements (Table 3.3). Both older people (aged 65 or above) and younger people (aged 18-24) are more likely than middle-aged groups to believe that 'most homeless people could find somewhere to live if they really tried'. However, older people are more likely than younger people to think that 'many people say they are homeless just to get a house from the council' - 49% of those aged 65+ agree with this statement, compared with just 34% of those aged 18-24 and just 27% of those aged 25-34. ¹⁴ Thus it appears that young people are less likely than older people to question the motives of people who present as homeless, but equally likely to believe that people could find a way out of homelessness if they really tried.

Table 3.3 Attitudes to homeless people BY age

Education

3.13 Attitudes to each of our three statements vary significantly depending on the respondents' educational qualifications (Table 3.4). Those qualified to degree or higher education level are least likely to agree that 'most homeless people could find somewhere to live if they really tried' (33%, compared with 58% of those with no qualifications) and that 'many people say they are homeless just to try and get a house from the council' (22%, compared with 51% of those with no qualifications). Broadly speaking then, those with higher educational qualifications are more likely than those with no qualifications to be 'sympathetic' in relation to these two measures. However, in relation to our first statement, that 'most homeless people have just been unlucky in their lives', those with higher education or degree level qualifications on the face of it appear to be the least 'sympathetic' group - 41% agree with this statement, compared with 61% of those with no qualifications.

Table 3.4 Attitudes to homeless people BY highest educational qualification

3.14 The data does not present us with an obvious explanation for this apparent inconsistency in the views of more highly qualified respondents. However, one possible interpretation might be that when thinking about the statement ' most homeless people have just been unlucky in their lives', some respondents are considering the broader causes of homelessness. They may not think homeless people have 'just' been unlucky because they may believe homelessness has wider social and economic causes - for example, structural factors such as a lack of affordable housing and/or there being inadequate care provided by society for vulnerable people. On this interpretation, disagreeing with the statement does not necessarily imply lack of sympathy with homeless people (although agreeing with it does still imply a broadly sympathetic view).

Tenure

3.15 Our analysis suggests that whether a person lives in socially rented, private rented or owner-occupied accommodation is less strongly associated with attitudes towards homeless people than other factors, like education, sex and age. There is no significant variation by tenure in responses to any of our three statements. For example, 38% of social renters agree that 'many people say they are homeless just to try to get a house from the council', as do 35% of owner-occupiers. The fact that those who present as homeless are likely to be applying for social rented housing does not appear to make social renters any more or less suspicious than others about people's motives for saying they are homeless.

Other socio-demographic factors

3.16 Other socio-demographic factors included in our analysis of responses to these statements were: area deprivation, socio-economic class (as measured by NS- SEC¹⁵), Scottish Government urban-rural classification ¹⁶, newspaper readership, self-assessed hardship and household income. None of these are significantly and independently associated with the belief that 'most homeless people could find somewhere to live if they really tried' or that 'many people say they are homeless just to try to get a house from the council' after other factors, like education and age, are taken into account.

3.17 However, there are some variations in the belief that ' most homeless people have just been unlucky in their lives' by socio-economic class, household income and newspaper readership. In summary, employers managers and professionals and those on higher incomes are more likely than those in routine and semi-routine occupations and those on low incomes to disagree that 'most homeless people have just been unlucky in their lives'. These differences are apparent even after the relationships between education, class and income are taken into account. One possible interpretation of this is that those who are in socio-economically privileged positions find it difficult to believe that others lack control over their socio-economic status. An alternative interpretation would be that (as suggested above in relation to education) these groups reject the notion that homelessness is 'just' a result of luck, instead considering there to be broader societal causes at play.

3.18 While there is no difference in the attitudes of broadsheet and tabloid readers, those who do not read any newspaper are somewhat less likely to disagree with this statement.

Contact with homeless people and experience of homelessness

3.19 A third of our sample (35%) come across people they consider to be homeless at least once a week, while around 3 in 10 (28%) either never come across people they think are homeless, or do so less than once a year. As discussed in Chapter Two, we included this question to enable us to explore what, if any, impact 'low level contact' with visibly 'homeless people' has on attitudes towards homelessness. Three different possibilities present themselves here. On the one hand, people who regularly come across people they believe to be homeless may have a heightened awareness of homelessness as an issue and be more sympathetic as a result. On the other, routine but low-level exposure to 'visible' homelessness may lessen people's sympathy. A third possibility is that it has no particular impact - that people's attitudes are shaped by demographic and other factors rather than this 'low level' contact with 'homeless people'.

3.20 Bi-variate analysis ¹⁷, where responses to our three statements are cross-tabulated by level of 'contact' with homeless people, provides some support for the first of our three hypotheses. Those who say they never come across anyone they consider to be homeless are most likely to agree both that 'homeless people could find somewhere to live if they really tried' (57%, compared with 43% of people who say they come across homeless people most days) and that 'many people say they are homeless just to try and get a house from the council' (44%, compared with 36%). However, regression analysis ¹⁸ suggests that our third hypothesis is in fact the more plausible - how often respondents come across someone they believe to be homeless does not appear to be significantly related to attitudes once other factors like age, sex and education are taken into account.

3.21 As discussed in Chapter Two, three in ten people in our sample had either experienced homelessness themselves or knew someone who had been homeless. One might expect that personal experience or knowing someone who has experienced homelessness would incline people to be more sympathetic towards people experiencing homelessness generally. However, our regression analysis suggests that those with this kind of personal experience of homelessness are actually more likely than those without such experience to agree that 'many people say they are homeless just to try to get a house from the council'. However, they are also more likely than those without such experience to disagree with this statement (Figure 3.2). Thus it appears that experience of homelessness is simply associated with having more definite views on this issue, in either a 'sympathetic' or 'unsympathetic' direction.

Figure 3.2 'Many people say they are homeless just to try to get a house from the council' BY experience of homelessness

Base: 1,437 (all respondents who completed the self-completion questionnaire)

Underlying social and political attitudes

3.22 A third possible set of explanations for people's attitudes towards homeless people relates to their underlying beliefs. The Scottish Social Attitudes survey includes two sets of questions which aim to measure respondents' wider ideological values. The first set measures attitudes towards issues such as freedom of expression, law, discipline and tradition, while the second measures views on the distribution of resources in society, whether government should redistribute income and attitudes to 'big business'. Responses to each set of questions can be combined to form an 'index' which indicates (a) how libertarian or authoritarian and (b) how politically left or right-wing a respondent's beliefs are. ¹⁹

3.23 In their analysis of public attitudes to begging, Adler et al found that having more libertarian views was a key predictor of being more sympathetic or understanding towards people who beg (in Jowell et al (eds.), 2000). Although homelessness is clearly not equivalent to begging, we might expect to find similar patterns here. In relation to the second two of our three statements, such a relationship clearly exists (Table 3.5). Respondents at the more authoritarian end of the scale are much more likely to agree that 'many people say they are homeless just to try and get a house from the council' (51%, compared with just 18% of those at the more libertarian end). Similarly, 55% of those who are more authoritarian in their underlying beliefs agree that 'most homeless people could find somewhere to live if they really tried', compared with just 35% of those who are more libertarian. This pattern of association is confirmed by logistic regression analysis.

Table 3.5 Attitudes to homelessness BY underlying libertarian/authoritarian beliefs

3.24 The belief that the distribution of income in society is unfair might be expected to be an important predictor of a sympathetic attitude towards the position of homeless people. One might also, therefore, expect that those who are politically more left-wing would be more sympathetic towards homeless people. In fact, position on the left-right scale is only significantly related to one of our three statements - 'Many people say they are homeless just to try and get a house from the council'. Moreover, the relationship between being left or right wing and responses to this statement ran in the opposite direction from what one might expect. Those who are relatively more left-wing in their underlying values are more likely than those who are right-wing to agree with this statement (45%, compared with 31%), suggesting that they are in fact somewhat more suspicious of the motives of people presenting as homeless (Table 3.6).

Table 3.6 Attitudes to homelessness BY underlying political left/right beliefs

3.25 This finding is perhaps less surprising, however, when we take account of the relationship between being left-wing and two factors that are strongly associated with holding less 'sympathetic' attitudes on this measure - being more authoritarian and having no educational qualifications. Those who are politically more left-wing are more likely than those who are right-wing to hold authoritarian views (48%, compared with 29%). They are also more likely to have no qualifications - 34%, compared with 14% of more right-wing respondents. In fact, when we take these other factors into account, the difference in attitudes between those who are left-wing and those who are right-wing disappears ²⁰.

Discrimination towards homeless people and other groups

3.26 In addition to questions about homelessness, the 2006 Scottish Social Attitudes survey also included a module of questions on attitudes towards different groups of people living in Scotland. This was intended to explore the extent and nature of discriminatory attitudes in Scotland, focusing particularly on gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, religion and age, and will be reported in full in a forthcoming report for the Scottish Government. In order to explore whether holding a 'critical' or 'unsympathetic' attitude towards homeless people is associated with holding attitudes that could be described as more discriminatory towards other groups of people in Scotland, we cross-tabulated responses to the three statements discussed in this chapter by responses to questions intended to measure discrimination towards gay men and lesbians, minority ethnic groups and Eastern European.

3.27 Although the associations are far from perfect, we did find some evidence that those who are more likely to hold attitudes that could be characterised as discriminatory towards these other groups are also more likely to hold 'critical' views about homeless people . For example, among those who agree that 'people from ethnic minorities take jobs from other people in Scotland', 55% also agree that 'most homeless people could find somewhere to live if they really tried'. This compares with just 38% of those who disagree that people from ethnic minorities take away jobs. Similarly, those who think 'sometimes there is good reason for people to be prejudiced against certain groups' are more likely than those who think 'Scotland should do everything it can to get rid of all kinds of prejudice' to agree that 'most homeless people could find somewhere to live if they really tried' (55% compared with 41%).

Key points

• Public attitudes to homelessness are complex.
• • 48% of people agree that 'most homeless people have just been unlucky in their lives', but 28% disagree and 22% neither agree nor disagree.
  • At the same time, 45% agree with the more 'critical' statement that 'most homeless people could find somewhere to live if they really tried', while 33% disagree
  • 35% agree that 'many people say they are homeless just to try and get a house from the council', while 29% disagree.
• Thus not only are public responses to homeless people widely divided, but it appears possible to be 'sympathetic' in one respect (perhaps viewing someone becoming homeless as simply bad luck), while holding more 'judgemental' attitudes in others (for example, thinking they could get out of homelessness if they 'really tried').
• Women are generally more 'sympathetic' towards homeless people than men - for example, 53% of women, compared with 42% of men agree that 'most homeless people have just been unlucky in their lives'.
• Attitudes also vary by age, with older people most likely (aged 65 and above) to agree that 'many people say they are homeless just to try to get a house from the council' (49%, compared with 27% of those aged 25-34). Both older (65+) and younger (18-24) people are more likely than the middle-aged to agree that 'most homeless people could find somewhere to live if they really tried'.
• Education is strongly associated with holding less 'judgemental' attitudes towards the motives and behaviour of homeless people. For example, just 33% of those qualified to higher education level or above agree that 'most homeless people could find somewhere to live if they really tried' compared with 58% of those with no qualifications.
• However, those with no qualifications are in fact more likely to agree that 'homeless people have just been unlucky in their lives' (61%, compared with 41% of those with degrees). One possible explanation for this apparent inconsistency is that some disagree with this statement because they believe homelessness has broader socio-economic causes - for example, structural factors such as a lack of affordable housing and/or there being inadequate care provided by society for vulnerable people - and is therefore not just a question of luck.
• There is little difference in attitudes towards homeless people by tenure, after other factors like age; income and education are controlled for.
• 'Low level' awareness or contact with the 'visibly' homeless does not appear to have much impact on attitudes towards homeless people.
• Personal experience of homelessness appears to be associated with having more definite views in either direction on whether people say they are homeless just to try and get a house from the council.
• The extent to which someone's underlying beliefs and values are more libertarian or authoritarian is strongly related to attitudes to homelessness. Respondents at the more authoritarian end are much more likely than libertarians to express attitudes that could be described as 'unsympathetic' or more 'judgemental'. For example, 51% of 'authoritarian' respondents agree that many 'say they are homeless just to try and get a house from the council', compared with just 18% of more libertarian respondents.

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