First developed in the US, the initiative known as Housing First, is being adopted increasingly in Europe. Unlike traditional approaches, it doesn’t require individuals to meet certain criteria before receiving housing assistance. The idea is that homeless individuals have a higher chance of creating a brighter future for themselves if they first have a roof over their heads.
Carlos Martínez Carrasco lived rough for several years before a Housing First initiative provided him with a flat on the outskirts of Madrid.
He told Real Economy that the flat has changed his life in every way: “I no longer lack the things that you do when you’re on the street and I can cook. I don’t have to find a way to wash clothes… I can go out with the peace of mind that I have a place to come back to. I am very happy today.”
Society always pay for the homeless, regardless if the homeless are given homes or not.
Don’t give them homes … society gets to pay for more policing, more security, more judicial, more emergency health, more social problems.
Give them homes … No it doesn’t create a Utopia but with the money saved in less policing, less security, less judicial, less emergency health, the savings are used to pay for a home.
So go ahead be a right winger or a left winger, no matter how you cut it, we all pay for the homeless no matter what we do. It’s just that one solution is compassionate and one is not.
If you want to argue the Christian way, than …
‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’”
- Matthew 25:40
I’m a leftist because I’m a fiscal conservative. It doesn’t take compassion (which is just as well, because frankly I’m not all that compassionate); it just takes not being so vindictive that you want to pay extra to persecute the poor to keep them down on purpose.
You can apply the same view to e.g. healthcare. It is a lot cheaper to pay for preventative healthcare for everyone than to deal with health issues once they get to the point where they become unbearable.
This will never work. When they just give houses to people who are homeless how will we know who’s homeless and who isn’t.
/s this is great. I wish the US Would follow suit.
I was furious at you for a brief moment, haha.
Every time a town in the states does this or a city or a country anywhere, it works.
people have the few weeks of time they need to regularly clean themselves and get a job which leads to income coming in, and they can get transportation which provides opportunity, and so on and so forth.
I love it every time I hear about a housing solution working because they finally stripped away all the b******* and just gave people houses.
That helps for the homeless who are people that are just down on their luck, but it won’t solve the issue for those who are chronically homeless due to mental illness and/or drugs.
Idk what the statistics are for Europe, but 60-80% of the chronically homeless in the US fall into that category.
Homelessness is a very complex issue, and while it gets better if housing is provided, it won’t solve the issue.
The number of addicted people or people with mental health issues is closer to 30%, it might seem higher to you because you notice those people more.
Things get much better if housing is provided since most people just don’t have a home, so let’s start there.
It depends on which EU country you’re talking about, the ones that provide support for addicts reduce their addicted population, the ones that provide housing reduce their homeless population, the ones that provide mental health services reduce their mentally ill population.
Just like in the US, and everywhere else these programs are implemented.
UBI and comprehensive social support are the obvious solutions to most of these problems, and a historically work, so I take every new properly made social program as a success, especially if they are continued after they prove their worth.
That’s true, but it will give even them an important baseline improvement. You aren’t fixing all their problems but you’re fixing a huge problem that all of them have
It is only applied in a very limited amount of states or even cities in the US. Meanwhile there is many more that just criminalize homleseness, make public spaces more difficult for homeless people to exist in and all the while make it easier for landlords to kick tenants out or raise rent into absurdity and then kick them out.
Some people dont have homes. Give them homes. Everyone has homes🤯🤯🤯
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In this episode of Real Economy, Euronews Reporter Paul Hackett discovers how providing the homeless with housing as a starting point rather than an end goal, is transforming lives and fast becoming a long-term solution.
Carlos Martínez Carrasco lived rough for several years before a Housing First initiative provided him with a flat on the outskirts of Madrid.
Two NGOs, Provivienda and Hogar Si, co-manage several Housing First initiatives in Spain, including the one that gave Carlos a home in Madrid.
Every EU member state has committed to spend at least 25% of its ESF+ resources on tackling social inclusion and at least 3% on addressing material deprivation.
The European Platform on Combating Homelessness is also working hard to bring about change while the Housing First Europe Hub, established in 2016 by Finland’s Y-Foundation and FEANTSA, seeks to give every person living on the street a home.
Progress in the current economic context won’t be easy, but evidence shows with the right policies and incentives, change is possible.
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