Esther Sample, who works for The Young Women’s Trust, conducted a research project on how to prevent young women’s homelessness based on housing models from around the world.
Her work inspired me to investigate how homelessness is being tackled globally and how the UK can take inspiration from other countries. Not having somewhere to go for guidance in a time of need causes women distress and anxiety. This is why countries like Canada and Finland have already taken different initiatives to prevent homelessness.
For example, Atira Women’s Resource Society in Vancouver supports women and children who have been affected by violence and offers them safe and supportive housing since 1983. The programme also provides education to end all forms of gendered violence. The organisation is continuously embracing new initiatives, such as SisterSpace, which has accumulated 16,000 visitors, of which 1,500 of them have already been housed based on their unique situation.
Finland introduced the Housing First scheme in 2007. Under its terms, the Finnish government not only provides homeless people with housing on a normal lease, it also guarantees that their rent will be paid via housing benefit. Housing advisors as well as financial and debt counselling services are available when people struggle to make ends meet. Since the scheme was launched, the government has reduced the number of long-term homeless people from 3,600 in 2008 to 2,400 in 2015 – down by a third, and created more than 1,500 new homes and packages for long-term homeless people. Of course the problem of homelessness in the UK is on a much bigger scale. But a study by the homeless charity Crisis found that a policy of this kind in this country could be more than five times as effective and nearly five times more cost-effective than existing services.
Whilst in Finland and Canada new approaches to minimise and hopefully eradicate homelessness are being presented, in England the problem only seems to worsen. Every year, local authorities carry out an estimate of the rough sleepers in their area and in 2018 the figures collected showed a dramatic increase from 1,768 in 2010 to 4,677.
Is the UK becoming complacent and complicit in the ever-growing homelessness crisis which is only made more evident when we look at the dramatic improvements other countries are making? Maybe the UK could start implementing stronger initiatives instead of turning a blind eye, but that seems to be a big if.
“DSC00051 – What is his story…..” by archer10 (Dennis) is licensed under CC BY-SA
