Housing First as a response to long-term homelessness is anchored in a consistent body of transcontinental evidence on effectiveness and results that consistently differ from traditional congregate responses including group-homes, shelters, or any other congregate or temporary housing solution also addressed to as the Continuum of Care or Staircase model. The HOME_EU (GA/726997), financed by the Horizon 2020 attained a series of results consistent with other research projects demonstrating the HF model capacity in reversing homelessness and promoting recovery (e.g., Greenwood et al., under review). The symposium provides an overview of the Project studies, implemented by a consortium composed by seven Universities, three Non-governmental Organizations, and a Municipality from 9 European Countries.
The first presentation is focused on the Experiences of Homeless Services as Capabilities-Enhancing in Eight European Countries, authored by Greenwood et.al. according to the capabilities approach, equality is best understood as the individual’s freedom to do and be in a particular context. Recently, the capabilities approach has been applied to theoretical and empirical work on homelessness. Homelessness has been referred to as a situation of “capabilities deprivation”, and the extent to which homeless services restore or enhance capabilities is of increasing interest. Housing First (HF) programs, with their emphasis on consumer choice, recovery, and home, are hypothesized to be experienced as more capabilities enhancing than traditional homeless services, with their emphasis on treatment compliance and housing readiness. In this presentation, we will describe findings from a large, mixed-method study of homeless services users’ capabilities. Using questionnaire data, we demonstrate that HF participants (n = 583) experience more choice and more housing quality, which in turn, predicts experiences of homeless services as more capabilities enhancing. Using data from semi-structured interviews with a subset of participants (n = 76) we present findings that, for participants engaged with HF programs, the establishment of home is integral to their experiences of capabilities in terms of interpersonal relationships, social networks, and community interactions. Results are discussed in terms of implications for systems change, practice, and policy. The second presentation authored by Santinello et al. focus on the outcomes of a mixed-method (including Focus-Groups and photo voice) study on the service features and the experiences of the providers and how service characteristics of the services impact the service users’ outcomes. The third study authored by Vargas-Moniz, et al. is about the impact of social policies in the HF programmatic development. Finally the Citizens study reports on the Knowledge, attitudes and practices and willingness to pay for the HF model of resulting from 5295 valid surveys distributed by eight weighted representative samples from each of the participant countries. The overall results indicate that the citizens are supportive to HF model as a response to persistent homelessness.
In each of the presentations the community psychology contributions are to be addressed ranging from participatory research methods, to measure selection, and also for organisational policy guided discussion and for the citizens study there is also a public health approach to address homelessness in Europe.