Housing First - Provincie West-Vlaanderen

Housing First5. Housing First in FranceIntroductionThis final chapter considers the applicability of theHousing First service model to France. The chapterbegins by looking at the global influence of HousingFirst. The second part of the chapter considerssome of the questions about the applicability of theHousing First approach to France. The chapterconcludes by listing three reasons why it is worthconsidering using Housing First services in France.The Global Influence of HousingFirstDuring the 1980s, enduring street homelessness andsustained use of shelter beds among a small groupof people with very high support needs appearedin many societies with advanced welfare systems 127 .This ‘chronic homelessness’ was a difficult problemto solve. Policy failure occurred at four levels:❱❱Chronically homeless people sometimes becamesemi-permanently resident in staircase servicesor other supported housing which failed to rehousethem.❱❱Chronically homeless people often becamecaught in a ‘revolving door’, repeatedly returningto homelessness after making use of services,such as staircase services, that, while theytemporarily stopped street homelessness, did notprovide a lasting solution.❱❱A small number of chronically homeless peoplewere not reached by any services or abandonedstaircase services because of their strict regimesand requirement for abstinence from drugs andalcohol. This group remained in the emergencybeds in homelessness shelters for very longperiods, restricting the capacity of homelessnessshelters.❱❱Public expenditure on attempts to counteractchronic homelessness was often considerablebut was – at best - only partially effective.In New York in the 1990s, Pathways Housing Firstachieved something that had not been achievedbefore. The PHF service targeted chronicallyhomeless people and produced lasting housingstability for the majority of this group of veryvulnerable people, using a mix of ordinary privaterented apartments and mobile support services.As variations of the Housing First model wereintroduced elsewhere in the USA, includingCommunal Housing First and Housing First Lightmodels, similar successes in achieving housingstability were reported.The level of success that Housing First serviceshave shown in delivering housing stability forchronically homeless people has never been seenbefore. It is this success that has led to HousingFirst being incorporated in homelessness strategiesin Denmark, Finland, Portugal, the Netherlands andIreland, as well as within France.Housing First has become very influential becauseit is the first homelessness service that can clearlydemonstrate that it provides an enduring solutionthat provides housing stability for the majority ofchronically homeless people. There is strongevidence that Housing First does what no otherhomelessness service has managed to achieve,providing lasting solutions to the most extreme formof homelessness.The Jury for the European Consensus Conferenceon Homelessness held in Brussels in December2010 recommended that ‘housing-led’ approacheswere the most effective solution to homelessnessand that the different forms of Housing First servicewere examples of these services 128 . The Juryidentified as ‘housing-led’ all those approaches tohomelessness which focus on:❱❱Access to permanent housing as the primaryresponse to all forms of homelessness.❱❱Prevention of loss of housing.❱❱Provision of adequate mobile support services onthe basis of need.127 Daly, G.P. (1996) Homeless: policies, strategies, and lives on the street London: Routledge.128 European Consensus Conference on Homelessness: Policy Recommendations of the Jury http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=88&langId=en&eventsId=315&furtherEvents=yes41