Last 24 April, Arrels organized the symposium “Housing First in Catalonia: Moving the Model Forwards” at Barcelona’s , bringing together Housing First specialists from different parts of the world and showcasing the EU-cofinanced Erasmus+ project Adapting Housing First – Innovating Housing Staff, whose remit is to identify how the Housing First model is being implemented and train the people working with it.
The action plan the Marc d’Acció per a l’Abordatge del Sensellarisme a Catalunya 2022–2025 is the Government of Catalonia’s single-most important instrument for creating and delivering a care model for people experiencing homelessness. The Marc is organized into three main lines of action: the acquisition of safe and stable housing, the implementation of a system of care and the design of a model by which homeless people can be accompanied and empowered.
The Marc has adopted Housing First as its main working model and therefore embraces the principle that having a home is a necessary condition for human dignity and the first step in any social intervention process that seeks to empower people experiencing homelessness. The Marc complements its use of Housing First with other schemes and services, such as inclusion housing, and adapts existing structures to serve the needs of the plan.
The Arrels symposium showcased the EU-cofinanced Erasmus+ project Adapting Housing First. Innovating Housing Staff, which is currently being led by the Irish community-sector organization Sophia with the partnership of Finland’s Y-Foundation, Germany’s , and Arrels.
During the symposium different speakers contributed to the discussion on how the Housing First model is being implemented in Europe. During the first part of the day, these included presentations by the UK’s Centre for Housing Policy at the , Finland’s Y-Foundation, Ireland’s Housing First National Office and the German association Neue Chance, a partner in Housing First Berlin. The second part of the day was dedicated to the discussion of the local situation in the roundtable How Can We Move Housing First Forward in Catalonia?.