00:00 There is at least 890,000 people living on the street or in a homeless shelter
00:05 on any given night in the European Union.
00:08 When you're homeless, it's very difficult to integrate in society.
00:17 Most homeless people are in poor health,
00:20 but it also jeopardizes the chances for reintegration.
00:22 It's very difficult to find a job.
00:24 You become disconnected, really disconnected from society.
00:29 Homelessness is a broader concept than many people believe.
00:32 It's not just people sleeping on the street.
00:34 It's also people staying in homeless shelters,
00:37 short-stage shelter or long-stage shelter,
00:39 but also people that are forced to sleep with family and friends,
00:42 sofa surfers because of lack of housing of their own,
00:45 as well as people about to be released from institutions
00:48 like prison or psychiatric care and who have no place to go to.
00:52 The most important factors are the dysfunctional housing markets
00:58 that don't produce enough affordable housing,
01:01 the migration crisis, the influx of migrants and the flaws in migration policy,
01:05 the cost of living crisis, obviously,
01:08 and then you have other factors like drug addiction, family breakup, etc.
01:13 What happens in the traditional approach to homelessness
01:19 is that we try to treat and solve all the problems that homeless people might have
01:23 in the shelter system, and then at the end, we provide them housing.
01:27 Housing First actually puts that upside down
01:30 because it uses housing as a tool for integration
01:33 rather than as a reward at the end of an integration process.
01:36 Immediately, we use the stability that housing provides
01:39 to deal with all the other problems, and that turns out to be extremely effective.
01:43 What they do well is that they have a long-term approach to homelessness.
01:50 The objective of that strategy is to end homelessness, to do it gradually,
01:55 and the strategies are housing-led with a strong place for Housing First.
01:58 And there is sufficient money put towards it to make it actually work.
02:02 If you focus on rough sleeping, it's definitely achievable.
02:09 We can just learn from what happened during the COVID period.
02:12 The speed at which rough sleepers were taken off the street,
02:16 into shelter or other forms of accommodation was quite incredible.
02:19 I think we can repeat that and make that sustainable by 2030.
02:22 (upbeat music)
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