Welcome to the eighth issue of Follow the Housing newsletter!
As countries across Europe announce - or have already implemented - new restrictions due to coronavirus cases surge, staying at home to prevent the spread of infection has become de facto a public health measure. But what does that mean for those who have no home?
"Housing is the first line of defence against Covid-19",wrote El Pais."With the pandemic, we have become more aware of the importance of the home, of the place to shelter, protect ourselves, be safe, rest, take care of ourselves."
If homeless people are a vulnerable group in the best of times, in the era of the coronavirus pandemic, their situation has become extremely precarious as their access to food, healthcare and temporary housing has become even more limited. During the first wave of the pandemic, many countries provided temporary accommodation, in hotels and public housing, to rough sleepers. But will this happen during the second wave as well? In Belgium, where a 10 PM - 6 AM curfew is currently in force, homeless people, sleeping on the streets of Brussels, will be given a ‘certificate of non-housing’ to prove they cannot obey the curfew - instead of a temporary accommodation - reported The Brussels Times.
And the future brings new challenges to rough sleepers. For instance, the Guardian recently reported that "foreign rough sleepers face being deported from Britain under draconian immigration laws to be introduced when the Brexit transition period ends."
In this issue of the newsletter, we are focusing on homelessness issues past and present, and are bringing you an overview of in-depth reporting and important reports and datasets related to homelessness.
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Make Yourself at Home_ Resources for your reporting
"Dying Homeless" was a year-long project by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that counted the number of people who died homeless in the UK. The investigative team logged the stories of 800 men and women that died while sleeping rough or living in temporary accommodation: "Dying Homeless: Counting the deaths of homeless people across the UK" (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, April 2018).
The Bureau's journalist Maeve McClenaghan, who led that research, published a book "No Fixed Abode, that recounts the investigation. The review of the book was published by The Guardian in September 2020.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism's in-depth project has had a big impact - the authorities started making official counts of homeless deaths. Also, the project was taken up by the ‘Museum of Homelessness’ later on: "The Dying Homeless project has been taken over by the Museum of Homelessness" (The Big Issue, April 2019)
In the Netherlands, the investigative journalism platform Argos looked into youth homelessness in the country, and found out that more than twelve thousand young people in the Netherlands are homeless. " Buitengesloten" ('Locked out', the investigation is published in Dutch, Argos, March 2020)
The European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless (FEANTSA) publishes an overview of European countries homelessness profiles and strategies for fighting homelessness. Homelessness Resources Database (FEANTSA, updated in December 2019)
Your Place or Mine?_ Housing questions that need answers
Is there legislation, a set of principles or legal precedents at the EU level that can be used to ‘force’ member states to take concrete action on homelessness? In Spain, there was a case of a single mother with six children squatting a vacant apartment owned by a financial firm. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations ruled that "the eviction of the family occurs without an examination of proportionality by the authorities constituted a violation of their right to housing." Do you know of similar cases - that could constitute legal precedents maybe - elsewhere?
Following a successful implementation of the “Housing First” program in Finland, other countries have tried to do the same. How successful have they been? And if the program doesn't work that well elsewhere, what does that say about the program (or the ways in which the Finnish system compares to others?
Do you have more questions, answers to any of the questions listed above or a simply a link to a useful data set or research? Let us knowand we'll share it with our mailing list and feature it in the Arena Housing Knowledge Base!
Let Me Show You Around_Welcome to our Knowledge Base
The Arena Housing Knowledge Base has a section dedicated to 'Homelessness': https://housing-base.journalismarena.eu/homelessness
Besides multiple media reports on homelessness (available in the 'Media Reports' category), it also features an entry about "Change: a Homeless Survival Experience" a video game about the experience of being homeless launched in May 2020, and an overview of city street count of homeless people for Berlin, Paris, Oxford, Dublin and Barcelona (under 'Data sources, sets and visualisations' category).
The Arena Housing Knowledge Base is a work in progress, and it gets better thanks to our communal effort.
Since our Knowledge Base Homelessness category looks pretty empty now, let us know if you know of any important media articles, academic reports or activist initiatives you'd like to see featured in the Knowledge Base!
Something to Write Home About__Tell us what's going on
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Reach out to:
Jose, Project Director (jose@journalismarena.eu)
Jelena, Community Coordinator (jelena@journalismarena.eu)
This report details case studies of what has happened during the emergency response phase of the pandemic, across the European End Street Homelessness Campaign – a network of local city campaigns that, despite their unique housing contexts, "have all faced the same urgency of the COVID-19 public health crisis."
