Housing First: A Home as the Starting Point for a New Life

Housing First is an internationally recognised approach that aims to supersede traditional responses to homelessness. It is based on a simple principle: housing as a fundamental human right, without exception. Rather than requiring people to resolve their problems before they can access housing, Housing First provides them with a safe and stable home so they can begin to address those challenges from a position of security.

To better understand this approach, it is important to consider what homelessness means in everyday life.

• It means a complete loss of privacy, sleeping exposed on the streets or in shared shelter dormitories with no personal space.
• It means living with constant insecurity, carrying everything you own in a single bag.
• It means having to comply with exhausting rules in temporary accommodation.
• It means facing strict requirements to find employment immediately or achieve abstinence from substance use before qualifying for support.
• It means spending each day navigating a bureaucracy of survival, waiting in endless queues for a meal or to replace lost identification documents.

Over time, this reality leads to increasing social isolation, the breakdown of family relationships, and a profound sense of loneliness, leaving people feeling invisible to the rest of society.

A home offers the exact opposite. It provides a private space, the freedom to take a shower, prepare a warm meal, and enjoy a peaceful night’s sleep. It restores a sense of safety and stability, bringing an end to the exhausting uncertainty of life on the streets. It creates the calm environment necessary for physical and mental recovery, free from the constant stress of homelessness, and provides a foundation from which people can begin rebuilding their lives. Most importantly, it is the first and most meaningful step towards social inclusion and reclaiming one’s identity. 

In practice, Housing First enables people to move directly into their own independent apartments within the community rather than into institutional accommodation. Housing is provided immediately and without preconditions, while a multidisciplinary team of professionals visits tenants in their homes to offer medical, psychological, and practical support whenever they choose to receive it. Individuals decide what type of assistance they need.The objective is to empower people, restore control over their lives, and gradually reduce their dependence on social services. 

For more than 30 years, Housing First has been successfully implemented in the United States, Canada, France, Spain, and Australia. Across Europe, evidence shows that at least eight out of ten participants remain permanently housed. At the same time, the model delivers substantial social and economic benefits by significantly reducing hospitalisations, lowering the costs associated with expensive emergency and temporary accommodation services, decreasing exposure to violence, and ensuring that children are fully integrated into the education system.

As an Associate Partner of the Housing First Europe Hub and a member of the Board of FEANTSA (www.feantsa.org), Emfasis brings together Greece’s only two certified Housing First Trainers. The organisation has already completed the design of the country’s first pilot programme with complete fidelity to the international model, providing immediate access to at least 12 independent homes alongside daily support for tenants over a minimum period of two years. 

This pilot programme will serve as a mechanism for producing hard data and as a living incubator for the next generation of professionals working in social care. Through rigorous scientific evaluation of its outcomes, we aim to provide policymakers with a comprehensive evidence base for the development of permanent public policies that will contribute to the substantial reduction and, ultimately, the eradication of homelessness in Greece.

Here you can find additional information.