The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has recently published a survey on homelessness in its member states. The new report reveals rising figures in Denmark, England, France, Ireland and the Netherlands. On the other hand, Finland seems to provide a good example with a national strategy focusing on housing first programs since 2008, managing to lower their numbers of homelessness to half the count of 1990.

The OECD survey highlights the problem of comparable data on this topic. As a matter of fact, one difficulty to address homelessness is the lack of common definition of what is homelessness, and the consequent difficulty to gather comparable data to measure the phenomenon. This absence of adequate data leads to an inadequate monitoring of the evolution of homelessness. The same problem was also brought up by our members during a recent event focusing on homelessness in the European Parliament in Brussels.

Eurodiaconia supports the ETHOS typology proposed by FEANTSA and advocates for  the development of a European definition of homelessness. This would allow the gathering of comparable data, facilitating the evaluation of policies, progress, and the exchange of good practices.

In august 2015, Eurodiaconia also issued a Policy paper on Homelessness and housing exclusion, as well as an Advocacy Plan.

To learn more on homelessness in OECD member states, check out the survey.