The aim of this thesis is to examine the relations between local government and voluntary organisations in two Swedish cities - Stockholm and Göteborg - with regard to the issue of homelessness, and to analyse how these relations have changed during the 1990's. A further aim is to explore to what extent different localities, due to variations in the economic and political context, vary in their responses to influences and pressures from the outside, e.g. from the central state. These variations, it is assumed, result in different approaches to local welfare production and, as part of that, different views on how to care for the homeless, and also create differences in the relations between local government and voluntary organisations. A qualitative methodology has been used in the two case studies. Most of the data have been gathered through personal interviews with informants from the local governments and the voluntary organisations respectively, supplemented with different kinds of documentary information. The comparative analysis indicates that, although social policy in Sweden is rather strictly regulated at the central state level, there are differences on the local level with respect to relations between the local government and voluntary organisations. In short, there are local modes of welfare production. In Stockholm, the voluntary organisations cooperate with local government agencies, but they have in particular staked out a niche of their own - to care for the most deprived of the homeless. The voluntary organisations in Göteborg, in contrast, have become an integrated part of a restructured local government.