Homelessness - Mission Future

Homelessness Action Manual

Why should we fly to Mars, when we can’t even solve the obvious problem of homelessness on our doorsteps? There is hope: in Salt Lake City, Houston, Dallas, Columbus (Ohio) or Milwaukee and our super role model Finland with the Y Foundation. Our Golden Global Champions, we present here. With a focus not on counting and describing homelessness, but 90 percent on reducing and eliminating it. On actions. With clear local leadership, good coordination of all stakeholders, planning and control, including finance. Housing First. Ending homelessness forever in 2030.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1. Challenges

2. Facts & Numbers

3. Best Practices

4. Golden Global Champions

5. Action Plan

6. Top Sources & Partners

1 - CHALLENGES

Still too many homeless people on our streets. Where are our priorities and our hearts as fellow human beings? Let us act with more humanity, creativity and effectiveness.

A pretty run-down man rings the bell. I recognise Franz in the camera. Homeless at the time. Later he died on the street.

We are friends. Since we began studying in 1981 at the University of California in LA as scholarship holders of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. At that time, he was deputy chairman of a nationwide association of students.

What a shock in the intact world of Gruenwald near Munich in Germany.

Franz tells me: “My job is gone, and I am broke.” Because he had invested his money in real estate in the new states of the former GDR that stood empty after a few years. Then he started drinking. He lost his job as an insurance agent. No money, no flat. On the street. Then a heart valve operation. An intelligent man with a golden heart.

How can you help him?

First, he stays in my house for weeks. He gets new clothes, a haircut and recovered. We talk. He needs money. After that we meet more often in Berlin.

Eventually I don’t hear from him anymore. An acquaintance from his student fraternity told me two years later: “Don’t you know that Franz is dead? Heart attack on the street.”

When I see a homeless man today, I think of Franz.

Remembering my friend Franz, I stroll down the famous Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles to the China Theater. Every 200 meters, a homeless person lies on the sidewalk. Fancy Teslas drive by apathetically - is this supposed to go on forever?

Why should we fly to distant Mars when we can't even solve this obvious problem on our doorstep? Where are our priorities and our hearts as fellow human beings?

In 1977, we left the solar system with Voyager, but were not able to solve this manageable global problem? With hearts and minds.

My impression is that politicians aren´t trying harder and more consistently.

Without creative solutions and a big master plan.

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2 - FACTS & NUMBERS

Why people become homeless and how many?

What is homelessness?

653,100

homeless people in the USA

895,000

homeless people in the EU – 70 percent more in one decade.

372,000

homeless people in the Germany

What is homelessness?

Not sleeping and living in ordinary homes.

on the street

or in insecure

or poor-quality housing

or shelters

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This innovative toolbox gets you on top of best practices and helps you to provide state-of-the-art and creative solutions at home without delay.

3 - BEST PRACTICES

Emergency shelters or Housing First? What you can learn from Finland, Salt Lake City (Utah), Columbus (Ohio), Milwaukee, the European Union, Germany and Vienna.

Best is Housing First

An emergency shelter could certainly be helpful in acute crisis situations.

But if someone is living day to day without roots, how can he or she cope with their problems and find a steady job?

A person needs not only a place to sleep, but a small home, peace, security, his or her own small kitchen, shower and restroom. So, he or she can invite acquaintances. In order to acquire a job, an individual address can be very helpful.

The old principle practiced was the so-called Step Model:

Homeless people first had to prove their so-called residential capability in various types of accommodation.
Not until the final stage their own home awaits

The new so-called Housing First strategy has a different approach:

Homeless people are given their own apartment right from the start.
Thus they are able to take control of their own
From the safety of a private home the other problems can be They can start to build a life around it. Can get sober, fight against alcohol and drug addiction, or other health problems, and search for work.

Finland

In Finland you don't see dirty homeless people with their sleeping bags in the parks, under bridges or in entrances, as for example in the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York or in Berlin and Paris.

In Finland homelessness has shrunk like in no other country in the world.

They are the Golden Champions in the fight against homelessness.

Much better than the United States of America or Germany.

At the end of the 1980s, the country with its five million inhabitants had 20,000 homeless people.

Today, fewer than 4,000 people have no place of their own.

A reduction of 80 percent.

Most of them sleep with acquaintances or family.

The number of people who actually spend the night homeless on the streets or in emergency shelters is estimated at just 655 in the whole of Finland.

NGOs and the government are working closely on pragmatic solutions.

Since 2007, a fresh Housing First program has been practiced very successfully in Finland with the help of NGOs and cities.

The Blue-Ribbon Foundation in Helsinki offers apartments for people without homes.

The largest non-profit landlord is Y-Säätiö (Y-Foundation), providing affordable rental housing.

This best practice social enterprise owns 18,500 homes in 60 locations.

10,800 are rental apartments for moderate prices (M-2 Kodit).

7,500 Y-homes are reserved for special groups, mainly homeless people.

These homes are rented by Y to local communities. They rent them to the people, serve the apartments and support the homeless with advice and job opportunities.

With 35 square metres per person, one or two rooms, bathroom and kitchen. Instead of the uncomfortable homeless shelters.

The residents pay a cheap rent, about half of the local rate.

They receive housing and social benefits.

NGOs are taking care of psychological or drug problems.

The good results of Housing First:

- 80 percent were able to keep their flat at the first attempt.

- Alcohol and drug abuse are declining.

We went to Helsinki in February 2024 and met Juha Kahila, Head of International Affairs of the Y-Säätiö and M2-Kodit Foundations, and asked him why Finland is so successful reducing homelessness.

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Affordable housing.

The basis for Housing First is the stock of enough affordable housing. In the 1990s, many cities sold their municipal housing to private investors. Left to itself, the market should level out. But this regulatory liberal idea failed at the bottom end. Without the construction of sufficient social housing, homelessness cannot be combated and eliminated. This is evident today.

Housing First saving money.

The responsible ministry in Finland has calculated that the state even saves € 15,000 per year per person with the Housing First approach.

Research in Brussels from November 2023 came to the same number.

A Canadian Study estimated even a saving of $ 25,000 per year with housing first, mainly because of the extremely high hospital costs reduced.

A minimum of € 5000 was calculated in other studies.

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It is true that Hosing First costs money for the real estate. But the high costs for emergency and police operations, time spent in prisons and medical treatments in expensive hospitals are saved in the long term.

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The city makes a friendlier impression on tourists and becomes more livable for its residents, as a good side effect.

Most importantly, the aid is in line with the Christian precept of charity and humanity.

Contact:

Y-Säätiö
Pitkänsillanranta 3 A
00530 Helsinki, Finland

https://ysaatio.fi/en/

More in: https://the-atlas.com/projects/finland-housing-first-homelessness.

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4 - GOLDEN GLOBAL CHAMPIONS

Our stars in the elimination of homelessness.

★★★ Salt Lake City (Utah) and Finland,

★★ Columbus (Ohio), Milwaukee and Vienna,

★ U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, European Union.

★★★ Salt Lake City (Utah) and Finland

Salt Lake City (Utah) ★★★

A drop of 90 percent.

The capital in the state of Utah managed to reduce the number of chronically homeless individuals from 2,000 (2005) to just 200 (2015).

The Housing First approach, backed by the dominant Church of Latter-Day Saints and its Christian values in a Republican state, were instrumental in this effort.

Helsinki (Finland) ★★★

Helsinki started with the best concept Housing First very early in 1985.

This Scandinavian role model has reduced homelessness by more than 80 percent.

Coordinated by the active Y-Foundation. 18,000 apartments in 57 locations. 26,600 people living in Y-Foundation’s apartments. More than 7,420 Y-Kodit apartments designed for special groups and over 10,580 affordable M2-Kodit apartments.

★★ Houston, Dallas, Columbus (Ohio), Milwaukee and Vienna

Houston ★★

Reduced homelessness by 64 percent in the last decade and 32 percent just in 2022.

No competition, but a joint venture with 100 nonprofit organisations, the city of Houston and three neighboring counties.

Houston is focused on housing first like Finland. It costs $18,000 a year per person, but three to four times more leaving homeless people on the street, because of expensive emergency and policing, jail time and hospital car.

Dallas ★★

The Office of Homeless Solutions centralized all services and to find “new and innovative solutions.”

The R.E.A.L.Time Rehousing program gave 2,700 unsheltered people a new home end of 2023, with a goal of 6,000 by 2025.

Columbus (Ohio) ★★

With a success rate of impressive 70 percent.

This city of 800,000 people in the center of the U.S.A. counted just 1,807 people homeless with only 16 percent living unsheltered in 2018.

Columbus improved its position due to a strong governing body with a Housing First approach.

Milwaukee ★★

The greater Milwaukee region is getting closer to be the first in the U.S. to end family homelessness.

Zero families have lived outside on the streets since 2020, and in just a year, from 2021 to 2022, the amount of time families stay in shelters before moving into new homes declined by up to 72 percent.

Vienna (Austria) ★★

The Austrian capital is best to overcome homelessness with its large social housing program.

60 percent of the two million people live in modern apartments owned by the city.

In Austria 12,055 were homeless in 2014. Since 2010 Housing First took effect, one third found an apartment with the help of friends. Followed by taking up a new job and a subsidized apartment, like by the Fonds Soziales Wien.

★ U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, European Union

U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness ★

This federal agency has a focus on preventing and ending homelessness in America. All 19 federal agencies involved implement the Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness. USICH combines the federal, state, and local governments, as well as the private sector, and helps communities to create partnerships. It is coordinating the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH).

European Union ★

The European Parliament voted 24 November 2020 “to end homelessness by 2030”. The text sets out a series of recommendations for member states. Including taking responsibility in tackling homelessness and working on prevention and early intervention, exchanging best practices; decriminalising homelessness; providing equal access to public services such as health care, education, and social services. The EU reaffirmed this 2030 objective the Lisbon Declaration in June 2021.

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5 - ACTION PLAN

What to do? Our nine action proposals, including a plan to eliminate homelessness, leadership, housing first, budget ideas.

What to do?

1. Paradigm shift from only talking to real rapid actions.

We already know the global best practices and must implement them now as quickly as possible. Just do it.

We need a global paradigm shift away from more conferences and endless talks to real actions. Otherwise, it is just political PR and an alibi.

Still too many cities burn too much energy in discussions, tells us Juha Kahila from the Y-Säätiö Foundation in Helsinki:

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2. From statistics to concrete eliminating models.

Most organizations focus on comprehensive statistics that are becoming more and more detailed. This is good and important, but it is only the beginning.

The focus should not be on counting and describing homelessness, but 90 percent on reducing and eliminating it.

This means that new reporting needs to change fundamentally and look at which models have best reduced homelessness around the world, how they work so well and why. Using our Global Golden Champions. At least half of all new reports should write about action tools.

In addition, the authorities responsible for homelessness need to develop detailed proposals for their cities, including construction costs, maintenance costs, etc.

We need a paradigm shift from describing and complaining to concretely eliminating through a rapid housing-first strategy.

3. Prevention is essential.

In the cities many affordable housing projects are needed now. Many communities have neglected to build enough social housing units since the 1990^th.

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4. Do not hesitate - start to reduce homelessness now.

You can advocate for the elimination of homelessness on many levels: as a political initiative. As a government employee. As a politician. Don't wait for others, start yourself.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel locally. Just download the Homelessness Solution Box, curated by Mission Future, to have a rocket start and waste no time and limited resources.

How to plan, tells us Finland’s Y- Säätiö Foundation:

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5. Set an ambitious but realistic goal:

Eliminate homelessness by 2030

6. Build your own local presentation of actions and solutions.

Follow these main key takeaways from the successful Y-Foundation in Finland, which reduced homelessness beginning in 1985:

Priority for persons as human beings needing your help. Homelessness is not a choice.
An apartment is a human right, not a reward that a person gets when everything else is in order.
The Housing First model based on this principle provides the foundation for success.
Create partnerships and cherish cooperation. No one can end an issue as vast and pervasive as homelessness on their own. Partner and work closely and extensively with national and international partners, officials and NGOs.
Set a specific main goal. The main objective and most important contribution is to build and acquire rental apartments.
Focus your activities and gain first results.

Curate your local version. Draft your local action plan.

Check and add your needs, budgets and finance.

Short-term (next 12 months) and long-term.

Use global best practices, which have proven their worth over years and work well. Proposals should be based on the world's best examples and be locally appropriate. Housing First is a top priority.

Compile the core figures locally and get an overview. But avoid the statistical approach that is too often used. This only lists the facts. But it does not change the basic problem.

Combine all current programs: often the best option is simply expanding them.

Put everything together - numbers, info, graphs, pictures and images from this action box- and turn it into a local presentation. Fact-based, but most importantly, with your suggestions.

Key points

- Housing First

- Your local needs

- Financing

- Costs and saved costs (in Finland € 15,000 pa per person)

- Local action plan

- Timetable with elimination of homelessness

7. Clear local leadership is needed.

In addition, good coordination of all stakeholders, planning and control, including finance.

Juha Kahila explained us in Helsinki:

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This is the lesson learned in Columbus (Ohio) and Salt Lake City (Utah), missing in Seattle (Washington state) and many other communities.

8. Adequate funding is essential.

For Housing First, you need enough money.

McKinsey & Company, for example, have calculated a need of $360 - 410 million to house the homeless in the Seattle region (700,000). So far in 2018, only $78 million had been available in this very rich high-tech center of America.

In 2017, homeless costs in Los Angeles, for example, were $1.2 billion, San Francisco $241 million, San Diego $150 million.

9. Different housing solutions needed.

Juha Kahila from Y-Foundations argues:

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10. Activities and work important for happiness.

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Mission Future is proposing Happiness Mentors for homeless people, who help to develop a joyful life in more harmony. See details in our separate Action Manual “Happiness”. We should activate retired people for this support role.

11. More important actions

How to treat addictions

The Y-Foundation made these experiences:

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Always check and improve your plans, which must be flexible like bamboo.

Evaluate your success with best experts.

Interact with experts and research partners to evaluate success.

Revise your action plan every two years.

Eliminate weaknesses and adapt it to your experience.

Update innovative ideas with Mission Future employing the latest online version of our toolbox. Send us your ideas and suggestions.

Integrate your local experts and NGOs in your own Homeless Solution Network.

Aim at a broad consensus of politicians for your proposals ensuring quick actions.

Present your ideas to the public and media.

Ensure better national and international use your interconnected data and your local contacts.

Contact Y in Helsinki by mail and ask them to send you more details about the Housing First concept.

Visit this best practice in Helsinki with a delegation.

Update with Missionfuture.com to get the most important news via our special newsletter and Zoom-conferences.

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This innovative toolbox gets you on top of best practices and helps you to provide state-of-the-art and creative solutions at home without delay.

6 - TOP SOURCES & PARTNERS

Here is our Mission Future list of excellent global sources and partners for you to learn from and connect, to solve the problem of homelessness quickly, creatively, effectively and with sensitivity:

State of Homelessness 2023 Edition for 2022 (NAEH)

Y-Foundation, Helsinki (Finland)

This global pioneer in eliminating homelessness since 1985 is promoting the well-being and sustainable lifestyle of our residents.

Homewards (UK)

The Royal Foundation and Prince William have developed a program to reduce homelessness in the United Kingdom.

The 2023 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, December 2023

EU Housing First Project Sophia

Dublin-based Sophia coordinated an Erasmus+ funded EU-project on housing-first together with Y-Säätiö (research, Finland), Housing First (Berlin) and Arrels (Spain).

The European Parliament

November 24, 2020, the representation of 450 million Europeans voted to “end homelessness in the European Union by 2030.” 700,000 Europeans face homelessness each night in Europe, a 70 percent increase over a decade.

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Y-Foundation, Helsinki (Finland)

This global pioneer in eliminating homelessness since 1985 is promoting the well-being and sustainable lifestyle of our residents. The mission is home for all.

Y- Säätiö (picture) rents affordable homes and wants to eliminate homelessness in Finland.

Read the impressive success story of the Y-Foundation here:

Our Mission Future

1 - CHALLENGES

2 - FACTS & NUMBERS

3 - BEST PRACTICES

4 - GOLDEN GLOBAL CHAMPIONS

5 - ACTION PLAN

6 - TOP SOURCES & PARTNERS

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