Eradicating homelessness starts with seeing beyond a one-size-fits-all approach to homeless people.
In the European Union, with a population of some 450 million, 95 million people live in poverty. The European Commission’s Europe 2020 strategy aimed to lift 20 million people out of poverty by 2020. But that goal was never reached. So under the Action Plan of the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) the commission set a new poverty-reduction target of at least 15 million (including 5 million children) by 2030. Europe is not on course to meet that either.
Poverty and the rising cost of living are major causes of homelessness, which has grown substantially over the last ten years to reach an estimated 895,000 people. In 2021, the Lisbon Declaration aimed for an end to homelessness in Europe by 2030. But despite progress in a minority of member states (notably Finland through its Housing First policy), that goal also looks like a chimera—even though under article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights housing is recognised as a human right.
Increasingly diverse
Launched in 2022, Person First is an EU Erasmus+ research project that aims for a new, more effective approach to tackling homelessness, moving from mere material assistance to promoting participation and inclusion in society. Co-ordinated by the SMES Europa network with partners in nine countries, it surveyed 65 facilities and carried out site visits in Riga, Ljubljana, Athens and Helsinki.
It follows up on Housing First by putting individuals at the centre of policy-making, because the homeless population is increasingly diverse. It includes not only people in poverty but also undocumented migrants, ex-offenders, substance users, youngsters with mental-health problems, women escaping violence in the home, psychiatric patients … No one-size-fits-all solution is possible, conclude the researchers.
If the homeless stereotype is of an older man, perhaps an alcoholic, a very different model is found, for example, in a group of young people with mental-health issues, living together temporarily in a small-scale housing project where they are responsible for running their own lives. A holistic approach is required to encompass the four domains of necessary support: social assistance, physical and mental health, home and housing, and participation and rehabilitation.
The research touches on the obstacles to entering shelters that lead people to live on the streets. Rules and regulations often exclude couples, children, pets, undocumented migrants and alcohol and other drug users. Some of these may be understandable, to protect other residents, but there are other deterrents too: the risk of violence, theft, noise, lack of privacy and personal tensions. Shelters should be welcoming places, which not only offer a bed for the night but promote rehabilitation.
Glaring lack of support
The Person First project, ending in June, has already collated a raft of recommendations, presented in the European Parliament earlier this month. They call for an end to the harassment of rough-sleepers, condemning moves to confiscate their belongings or criminalise them.
Many homeless people have suffered traumatic experiences. But there is a glaring lack of mental-health support. In the parliament, Prof Ides Nicaise from KH Leuven highlighted the ‘alarming’ situation in refugee camps in Greece, where the shortage of care workers has permitted a cycle of violence and insecurity among families.
Indeed the research found that 60 per cent of homeless people suffered mental-health problems and concluded that community-based mental healthcare was more holistic and less expensive, while facilitating social reintegration. Fatima Awil from Mental Health Europe criticised the lack of disaggregated data—given the diversity of the homeless population—and highlighted the link between mental and physical (ill-)health. Calling for policies centred on individuals, she said monitoring and implementation were key.
Undocumented migrants
The second challenge looming large in the research is the plight of undocumented migrants, who have no right to housing support. In Florence, for example, undocumented individuals cannot gain access to shelters. So 70 per cent of those needing emergency services—their only alternative—are migrants, and of these four-fifths have no papers.
Person First calls for a legal right to temporary shelter for undocumented migrants to be written into the EU’s new migration and asylum pact—which civil-society organisations have criticised for legitimising ‘devastating’ attacks on human rights. According to the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM), refugees are being criminalised and there are moves in some countries to force service providers to report them to the authorities. People who offer shelter, food or healthcare to undocumented migrants have also been prosecuted.
Even EU citizens may be barred from assistance and find themselves on the streets. In Belgium, organisations such as Infirmiers de rue (street nurses) support Polish and other workers who, once their contracts end, have no right to social benefits. Freedom of movement is an EU principle and the union has a responsibility to protect mobile workers.
‘Postal paradox’
The minimum income is another of the EPSR principles vital to pulling people out of poverty, applied at national level. But homeless applicants fall foul of the ‘postal paradox’—the need for a place of residence before a payment can be made. Building more social housing is not the solution either, because it is not allocated to people living on the streets. Homeless people should have agency, the research says, calling for more networks such as Belgium’s Joint Homeless Front or Helsinki’s No Fixed Abode and for more people with experience of homelessness to be recruited into care services.
The EPSR declares (principle 19): ‘Everyone has the right to a good-quality, affordable place to live.’ The project wants to see the Person First approach adopted by the European Platform on Combating Homelessness (EPOCH), set up by the commission as part of the EPSR Action Plan. More data are urgently needed and including homelessness within the European Semester would oblige monitoring by member states and regular progress reports.
But these recommendations require investment. Speaking in the parliament, the chair of EPOCH, the former Belgian prime minister Yves Leterme, called for an integrated EU action plan to fight homelessness, with funding across a number of years. Yet with the EU’s new fiscal rules setting limits on member states’ public spending, that looks idealistic. NGOs and trade unions have criticised the fiscal framework, branding it the return of austerity. According to the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), only three member states will be able to meet their social and environmental targets.
Anything but propitious
Nicaise conceded that EU social policy was ‘not linear’—that sometimes it went backwards. Despite the recent La Hulpe Declaration, reaffirming the EPSR as an EU priority and referring specifically to homelessness, the current political climate is anything but propitious. With the new EU institutional mandates after the elections to the parliament in June, it could get worse.
The European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless FEANTSA recognises the need for ‘realism’ in applying the project recommendations. But according to Fernando Chironda of the European Anti-Poverty Network, Europe needs a more radical reassessment of its economic and social models and the root causes of poverty. The current system perpetuates inequality and prevents people—even with jobs—from exiting poverty, thereby maintaining a cycle of guilt, shame and poor mental health.
The choices Europeans make in June are bound to influence many lives.
This is part of our series on a progressive ‘manifesto’ for the European Parliament elections
Kate Holman is a freelance journalist based in Brussels who worked for a number of years as a writer and editor at the European Trade Union Confederation.