Ways Out of Homelessness: Exchanging Local Solutions in Central Europe
- Luca Koltai and Boroka Fehér
- Jan 29, 2016
- 4 min read
Editor’s note: We believe stories about local progress to end homelessness can inspire and spur new thinking. To that end, we’ll occasionally share guest posts about what your colleagues in other countries are doing to tackle homelessness, with contact information to allow you to follow up with authors directly. We are grateful to Luca Koltai, Chief Operations Officer at Habitat for Humanity Hungary, and Boroka Fehér, BMSZKI, for the guest post below on the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership Project, "Ways out of Homelessness."
The Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership Project “Ways out of Homelessness” unites organizations working with people experiencing homelessness in Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic. The project encourages the use of evidence-based practice to support pathways out of homelessness in specific local policy contexts.
The project unites the Budapest Methodological Centre of Social Policy and Its Institutions (BMSZKI, HU) and involves project partners SAD (CZ), Ius Medicinae Foundation (PL), Casa Ioana (RO), Habitat for Humanity (HU) and FEANTSA, the European Federation of Organizations Working With Homeless People. The project is founded by the European Union’s Erasmus + program.
The objectives of the project are twofold:
to identify the key obstacles facing people experiencing homelessness when trying to access the housing market, and
to exchange local good practice on pathways out of homelessness.
Partners have agreed to share and evaluate good practices in supporting people experiencing homelessness into housing, as well as identify training needs and existing options for support workers to help homeless individuals and communities more efficiently.
The six partner organizations meet five times during the course of the project. Three meetings have already taken place in Budapest, Prague and Bucharest. The fourth meeting will take place in Warsaw in February and the fifth in Brussels in June 2016.
In Budapest, participants were introduced to several projects and institutions organized by the two Budapest partners. The goal of Habitat for Humanity’s project is to provide people experiencing homelessness with long-term, independent and direct accommodation. The project’s approach for tackling homelessness is to move people experiencing homelessness from the street directly into their own apartments, rather than moving them through different "levels" of housing (e.g. from the streets to a public shelter, and from a public shelter to a transitional housing institute). The project builds on cooperation with local municipalities, renovating municipal social rentals with the help of the clients and volunteers. Funding for the project comes from private donations, as it receives no state or municipal funding.
The Single Room Occupancy (SRO) House of BMSZKI provides long term, cheap accommodation for clients with their own source of income. BMSZKI’s supported housing for rough sleepers projects were aimed to help rough sleepers to find and keep independent accommodation for the period of the project and to help the beneficiaries reach goals set for themselves. These goals included finding (better) employment, accessing health care services, and reestablishing family connections.
Both projects target reintegration through solving housing problems, providing personal and social support tailored to individual needs, and improving physical and mental health conditions. Case-management targets building competence and resources to help the beneficiary become able to sustain private accommodation without monetary or other support and establish an independent lifestyle.
In Prague, participants were introduced to several housing solutions for homeless or at-risk people. Among them was the concept of training flats by the NGO Naděje, a local service provider and a member of SAD.
Naděje has agreements with the City of Prague as well as two district municipalities, renting 11 apartments from them, subletting them to users of one of the four hostels the organization operates in Prague. The tenant then is supported by a social administrator from the municipality (helping them especially with financial and administrative tasks) and a social worker from the hostel who conducts visits. Tenants can stay for a maximum of two years in these apartments, which is usually an adequate amount of time – as reported by Gabriela Sčotková, the manager of the Hostel and Night Shelter in the Žižkov district of Prague, most tenants manage to stabilize their situation and move out to a more permanent form of housing during this time.
In Bucharest, project partner Casa Ioana introduced their way of working with families experiencing homelessness. As social housing is almost non-existent, families experiencing homelessness with children older than 2 years of age can only turn to NGOs like Casa Ioana for emergency accommodation and support. The ACASĂ program offers safe transitional housing and comprehensive support, including peer support, training and social employment opportunities to families in need. Most families can get their problems solved within a year, but if needed, they can stay on for longer, said Ian Tillings, Director of the association. The project does not receive any state funding.
You can download presentations and descriptions of the presented practices and projects from the BMSZKI website. For more information, contact Luca Koltai (luca.koltai@habitat.hu) or Boroka Feher (feher.boroka@bmszki.hu).
Disclaimer: The opinions, representations and statements made within this guest article are those of the author and not of the Institute of Global Homelessness as a whole.
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