Housing First Berlin

Housing First Berlin was founded in October 2018 in Berlin as an innovative model project for the long-term fight against homelessness .

The Housing First Berlin model project is a project partnership between Berliner Stadtmission eV and Neue Chance gGmbH, in which homeless people are housed in apartments for an unlimited period and with their own rental agreement and are also professionally looked after.

The three-year model project to overcome homelessness for people with long-standing complex problems, with which existing support offers have so far not been successful, aims among other things:

Renting objects for those affected
Mobilization of (self-help) forces ( empowerment )
Creation of 40 accommodation places
Cooperation with other actors.

Housing First Berlin

The guiding principle is based on the assumption that housing is a human right. The right to housing is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and grants for adequate housing are also enforceable in Germany. However, the claim did not make it into the German Basic Law and last failed in 2017.

The police or the municipalities must therefore involuntarily provide homeless people who are unable to find accommodation themselves, on request, temporary and temporary accommodation.

Housing First Berlin was supported as a model project by the Berlin Senate Department for Integration, Labor and Social Affairs with 143,000 euros in 2018 and 580,000 euros in 2019. The goal was to help at least 40 homeless people get their own rental agreement in three years. It should be 80 by the end of 2021.

After a year, 35 homeless people were living in their own four walls. Unlike Housing First Finland, Housing First Berlin is not allowed to build it itself.

background

The idea originally came from the USA, in the early 1990s Sam Tsemberis developed this method to help the homeless. It was adopted in Finland and implemented by the Finnish Y-Foundation, whose head has been Juha Kaakinen since 2013. The Finnish Y-Foundation is financed by donations and distributions from the state gambling monopoly, owns around 17,500 apartments in 2020, making it the fourth largest landlord in the country. Since 2008, around 4,600 apartments have been brokered to people without a place to stay in Finland (as of 2019). There is hardly any homelessness in Helsinki.

Weblinks sources

https://housingfirstberlin.de/
Holger Fröhlich, Tine Fetz: First the solution, then the problem; in: brand eins, issue 4/2020, page 110 ff.

Individual evidence

↑ [1] , Neue Chance Berlin, accessed on March 28, 2019.
↑ [2] , Housing First Berlin, accessed on March 28, 2019.
↑ [3] , short concept, accessed on March 28, 2019.
↑ Ruder, Karl-Heinz: Principles of the police and regulatory accommodation of (involuntarily) homeless people with special consideration of homeless Union citizens , materials on helping the homeless, issue No. 64, 2015, pp. 22-23
↑ [4] , 35 homeless people found an apartment in Berlin, accessed on March 28, 2019.
↑ Kathrin Glösel: Finland has managed that there are practically no homeless people any more. In: Contrast.at. November 12, 2019, accessed on July 27, 2020 (German).

[1] [1] , Neue Chance Berlin, accessed on March 28, 2019.

[2] [2] , Housing First Berlin, accessed on March 28, 2019.

[3] [3] , short concept, accessed on March 28, 2019.

[4] Ruder, Karl-Heinz: Principles of the police and regulatory accommodation of (involuntarily) homeless people with special consideration of homeless Union citizens , materials on helping the homeless, issue No. 64, 2015, pp. 22-23

[5] [4] , 35 homeless people found an apartment in Berlin, accessed on March 28, 2019.

[6] Kathrin Glösel: Finland has managed that there are practically no homeless people any more. In: Contrast.at. November 12, 2019, accessed on July 27, 2020 (German).