oa Mysterieuze gasten

Mystery guests. Policy research to the access of emergency shelters with people who have experience with homelessness themselves

In many Dutch municipalities access to shelter is only given to a person when he or she has a ‘local connection’ to the geographical area. Therefore, the question is to what extent shelter services are accessible nationwide. In the presented study we tested policy in practice: Mystery guests (people with experience of homelessness) visited shelter facilities and reported their findings. In the article we explore the possibility to do policy research using mystery guests, and the pros and cons of working with people who have experience with homelessness themselves. It is concluded that this kind of research is a good method to test policy in practice, under the condition that enough time and support is provided. Collecting data with a combination of checklists and in-depth interviews would provide richer information about the experiences the mystery guests had in the field.