This Week in Homelessness: February 12-18
- Tiffany Connolly
- Feb 17, 2017
- 3 min read
In Madrid, Spain, several new initiatives toward homelessness aid are underway. Madrid's 2017 budget has allowed for Mayor Manuela Carmena to allocate 100 homes to people experiencing homelessness.
This housing initiative is a part of the Housing First Project, a model that provides accessible and permanent housing to people experiencing homelessness. RAIS Fundación, an organization who strives for social inclusiveness of people experiencing homelessness, has carried out this initiative in several cities throughout Spain in smaller numbers, which has produced successful results for more than 80% of their recipients. This ongoing initiative continues to reduce rates of homelessness in Spain. Read the full article here.
(This article's original text is in Spanish).
Jeff Olivet, CEO of the Center for Social Innovation, argues that national efforts to end homelessness can be improved by focusing on four components.
Housing serves as a foundation to ending homelessness; It provides stability to allow individuals and families to maintain primary aspects of a healthy life such as employment, relationships and health and nutrition. Services such as health care, childcare, substance abuse treatment and transportation, make individuals' and families'transition out of homelessness more successful. Social connections or inclusion must be established and nurtured to prevent feelings of loneliness and ostracism. Lastly, homelessness prevention requires service providers and legislation to analyze societal systems - education, healthcare, criminal justice, etc. - to become knowledgeable about who is most at risk for entering homelessness and what improvements must be made within those systems to reduce the negative effects they pose on housing security for individuals and families. He places emphasis on the need to tend to structural causes of homelessness such as wage stagnation, institutional racism and inadequate health and social services for individuals and families living in poverty. He says, "if we can figure those out, we can end homelessness once and for all." Read the full article here.
A recent Housing Europe report revealed that the number of people experiencing homelessness has increased in all EU countries under review except for Finland. Finland has reduced homelessness in their county by more than 50 percent over the past 25 years. Specifically, over a 25 year span, the country reduced the number of people living on the street or in temporary accommodation from about 3,800 to about 1000. How can other countries learn from Finland's progress toward ending homelessness? In 2015, the Building and Social Housing Foundation (BSHF) enabled homelessness practitioners from across Europe to learn from Finland's Y-Foundation through a peer exchange that allowed them to identify transferable policies and practices. The Y-Foundation has contributed to the country's decline in homelessness through their role in rental housing, as well as building support networks and promoting research and development work. Finland's declining rates of homelessness were achieved by focusing on Housing First initiatives, accompanied by support services, and maximizing co-ordination between various agencies. Finland's efforts demonstrated that if homelessness advocates, practitioners, service providers and legislation can build that level of co-ordination and commitment they can halve, and even end, homelessness anywhere. Read the full article here.
The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) will dedicate four days to collecting data on the number of people experiencing homelessness, as well as data on housing, in Pakistan. The count will be conducted in two different phases, with the first phase taking place on March 8th and April 13th and the second phase of the county being conducted on May 8th and 24th. The Bureau has already begun training for enumerators and other staff to conduct the census. In December 2016, it was estimated that of a population of about 200 million people, 20 million of them were experiencing homelessness. During this time, it was also estimated that there would be a need of about more than 1 million new homes to only partially meet the housing demand in Pakistan. Counts such as the one expected to take place in Pakistan this Spring play a vital role in helping to determining the measures required to tackle the issue of homelessness. Read the full article here.
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