Common Ground in Australia: An Object Lesson in Evidence Hierarchies and Policy Transfer
Developed in New York City in 1990, the Common Ground model of supportive housing has recently been embraced in Australia as a high-profile solution to chronic homelessness. Combining on-site support services with a congregate housing form accommodating ex-homeless people and low-income
adults, Common Ground is presented as an innovative model which permanently ends homelessness, enhances wellbeing, and strengthens communities. This article critically examines the process of transferring the model into Australia's social housing sector, drawing on the perspectives of the
high-level stakeholders closely involved. It argues that, despite official commitments to evidence-based policy, the ‘advocacy coalition’ driving this international policy transfer employed a ‘knowledge hierarchy’ wherein professional intuition and personal experience
were afforded a higher status than formal evaluative evidence. The article provides an example of the contested nature of what ‘counts as evidence’ in housing and homelessness policy, and considers what role academic research – as well as other knowledge sources – should
play in the policy development process.
Keywords: Common Ground; evidence hierarchies; homelessness; international policy transfer
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: 1: The Institute for Social Science Research, The University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Queensland, Australia 2: *, School of Built Environment, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS, UK 3: Association for Innovative Social Research, GISS, Bremen, Germany
Publication date: 02 January 2014
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