Housing Europe endorses EU's Platform on Combatting Homelessness Working Plan
A call for better knowledge on the drivers of homelessness that make so many vulnerable people fall through the cracks of welfare and housing systems
Paris, 28 February 2022 | Published in Social
The French EU Presidency has wrapped up a crucial meeting with Member States, European institutions, local and regional authorities, social partners, and civil society, including Housing Europe, that aims at encouraging and supporting actions for homelessness prevention.
Today, on February, 28th this effort was translated through the adoption of the Action Plan of EU Platform on Combatting Homelessness. The initiative was launched by France's predecessor, the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the EU, and has been taken forward in 2022.
On behalf of Housing Europe, our Research Director, Alice Pittini welcomed and endorsed the work programme of the Platform which includes proposals by the sector for mutual learning activities. She expressed once again public, cooperative, and social housing providers' commitment to making a concrete contribution to tackling this common European challenge. She went on to say that housing providers in the social public and cooperative sector have identified as key area for capacity building the issue of cooperation between housing and social workers as well as the general integration of accompanying support services that can help people access and sustain housing tenancies on a permanent basis. An event on this topic will be organised during the 3rd International Social Housing Festival in cooperation with FEANTSA and Fondation Abbé Pierre because our sector believes this kind of partnership is key for the success of local initiatives, such as Housing First projects and the integration of social services is also an area which could clearly benefit from use of EU funding.
"We also strongly support the objective to have better data on homelessness and in particular we would like to see developed better knowledge on drivers of homelessness, what makes so many more vulnerable people fall through the cracks of our welfare and housing systems. Only in this way we can work on not only tackling existing homelessness but also better preventing homelessness in the long term including by promoting better policies for better and more social and affordable housing," Alice Pittini concluded.