Today, we hosted a webinar to launch a mapping compiling our members work on homelessness and housing exclusion. During the webinar, we listened to two of our featured members present their projects. First, Elisabeth Köhnke from Diakonie Düsseldorf introduced the project “Kleine Ariadne” supporting women in homelessness who are pregnant or have small children. Then, Graham Yantis from Kirkens Korshær presented the project Kompasset, which provides services for hard-to-reach and destitute EU mobile citizens. Finally, Freek Spinnewijn, Director of FEANTSA gave an update on the current state of the European Commission Collaboration Platform on Homelessness.

Our mapping contains a (non-exhaustive) overview of our members’ crucial work on homelessness and based on their inputs, features some key trends and best practices. Moreover, it identifies the main approaches our members utilise when working with people living in homelessness. These are:

  • Emergency support: On-the-street aid, food provision, day centres, and temporary shelters are among the most typical form of support for people living in homelessness, and it is still fundamental.
  • Prevention & early intervention: Intervening before homelessness takes place through e.g., financial aid, employment support, and general counselling.
  • Holistic, personalised & long-term support: holistic support to help people regain their balance and transition to permanent housing solutions.
  • Housing First: This approach aims to provide people facing homelessness with stable housing from the start.

Our mapping exercise aims to raise awareness of innovative practices and effective approaches to combat homelessness. We believe that it can be a useful contribution for the recently created European Platform on Combatting Homelessness and an inspiration for other organisations and stakeholders to keep working towards ending homelessness by 2030.

You can access our mapping here.

You can also find more about Eurodiaconia’s key policy recommendations on homelessness in our Policy Paper “Homelessness and Housing Exclusion”.