funding strategies: building the case for …...funding strategies in the current economic climate,...

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www.feantsa.org www.habitact.eu www.cor.europa.eu 1

7th

European seminar on local homeless strategies

Funding strategies:

Building the case for homelessness

Brussels, 8 June 2012

Contents

Seminar programme

Introductory session

Session 1: Planning and budgeting – how to prioritise

Session 2: Cost-effectiveness and building the case for homelessness

Session 3: Diversification of funding sources

Seminar conclusions

ETHOS – European typology of homelessness and housing exclusion

Seminar on Twitter

Seminar webpage (with all speaker presentations)

http://feantsa.horus.be/code/EN/pg.asp?Page=1401

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PROGRAMME

Seminar Chair: Rina Beers, FEANTSA President

9h00 – 9h30 Introductory session EU structural funds – what opportunities for funding homelessness services? Gábor Toth - European Commission European Social Fund Unit The costs of not tackling homelessness – emerging trends

Stelios Kampouridis - Ministry of Health and Social Solidarity, Greece The role of the European Parliament in supporting the fight against homelessness Niccolo Rinaldi, Member of European Parliament, Italy, ALDE Group

9h30-11h00 Session 1. Planning and Budgeting – How to prioritise

How to budget a local homeless strategy – key elements Malin Östling - Gothenburg city council - Sweden Where to make savings in homeless services? Matt Harrison – Chief Executive, Homeless LINK, UK Normalisation of housing and living conditions in the field of homeless services: some financial arguments Volker Busch-Geertsema – GISS research institute – Germany Response: Gabriella Civico, Director of European Volunteer Centre on the pros and cons of using volunteers to make savings

**11h00-11h30 Coffee break**

11h30-13h00 Session 2. Cost-effectiveness: building the case for homelessness

Social experimentation principles – testing what works before mainstreaming Alain Régnier – Coordinator of French homelessness policy, reporting to Prime Minister – France Social return on investment: Demonstrating value in homelessness services Emma Vallance - Forth sector development and Rhona MacPherson - Dumfries and Galloway city council - Scotland, UK

Cost-benefit analyses of tackling homelessness in the Netherlands John van Leerdam, Cebeon, The Netherlands Response: Polish Member of European Parliament, Danuta Jazłowiecka, on a social investment pact for Europe

**13h00-14h00 Lunch** Viewing of films on homelessness

14h00-15h30 Session 3. Diversification of funding sources

Solidarity between cities – sharing the costs by pooling resources

Sara Baldisserri – Fondazione Casa Lucca – Tuscany region – Italy What role for business groups in homeless policy? Simon Sheehan – Director of the Hilton in the Community Foundation - Europe

The potential for social impact bonds to attract investors in the delivery of social services Frank Lee, Head of Holding Funds and Advisory for Northern Europe, European Investment Bank Response: Muriel Rabau, Vice-Chair of EU Social Protection Committee

15.30-16h00 Conclusions

Freek Spinnewijn, FEANTSA Director

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Context

In June 2011, the European Commission published its legislative proposals for the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). The MFF sets out the budgetary priorities in all the different policy areas of the Union for the years 2014 to 2020. It will serve as the financial backbone as the Commission continues to roll out its Europe 2020 strategy, its objectives of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and achieve its five headlines targets (including a target on poverty reduction in Europe). The European Parliament and the Council will examine the legislative proposals in 2012 and 2013, including proposals on Cohesion Policy, the European Social Fund, the European Regional Development Fund, and the European Programme for Social Change and Innovation, all of which will have an impact on homeless services and policies. This is an important time therefore to discuss funding strategies to ensure organisations active in tackling homelessness can bring a European financial dimension to their work. It is all the more important given the difficult economic climate where homelessness services and policy-makers are facing mounting pressure as a result of budgetary and austerity measures. It is a time to think carefully about where to cut back and where to invest for the future, while ensuring continued support for the most vulnerable groups in our societies.

The 7th European Seminar on Local Homeless Strategies was held on 8 June 2012 in

Brussels. It was hosted by the Committee of the Regions, with the support of FEANTSA (European Federation of National Organisations Working with Homeless People) and HABITACT (European Exchange Forum on Local Homeless Strategies). FEANTSA President Rina Beers moderated the one-day event, which brought together 120 practitioners from all levels (local, regional, national and European) working to make a difference in the area of homelessness. Rina Beers began by welcoming all participants to the seminar and highlighting the objectives of the seminar, namely 1. To reflect on prerequisites for successful funding strategies in the current economic climate, along three broad themes: budgeting, diversifying funding sources, cost-efficiency, 2. To give examples of existing funding strategies to tackle homelessness, with concrete/practical information for local organisations attending the seminar.

The seminar was organised along three main themes: 1. Planning and budgeting: How to prioritise? This session included presentations on rethinking service provision, areas to make savings, and how to budget a local homeless strategy 2. Cost-effectiveness. This session looked at how to ensure efficiency of spending on homelessness such as testing innovative approaches before mainstreaming them, using cost-benefit analyses, and showing social return on investment. 3. Diversification of funding sources. This session looked at the different ways of funding homeless policy such as sharing the costs with other authorities (between cities), organising business groups into policy goals, and the potential of social impact bonds.

Introductory session

The seminar was opened by Gábor Tóth, EU civil servant working on the structural funds in the Employment and Social Affairs Directorate of the European Commission. He gave an overview of opportunities for funding homelessness services through the Structural Funds, with a closer look at the European Social Fund (ESF) which focuses on employment and training, including employability of vulnerable groups such as people who are homeless. He referred to a concrete example under the current Structural Funds phase (2007-2013): a project funded in Hungary in 2009 under the ESF with a budget of 9 million euros, targeting 3500 people, with the participation of local municipalities and NGOs to provide different services such as diagnosis of skill gaps, individual action plans, developing job-search skills, employment training, and support in job applications; these employability services were coupled with housing support

such as housing advice and rent subsidies. As the current EU Structural Funds phase (2007-2013) is coming to an end, the EU institutions are preparing the next phase (2014-2020). The European Commission published legislative proposals in October 2011 and both the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers are now examining these proposals.

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In terms of tackling homelessness, the European Commission's proposals on the future ESF can lead to new opportunities since they include the following suggestions: - To link the EU Structural Funds to the Europe2020 strategy (Europe's economic and employment strategy) which has an EU target to reduce poverty by 2020 - To better coordinate the use of different Structural Funds. In the case of homelessness, the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) can be complimentary to the use of the ESF to set up the infrastructure needed to tackle homelessness (social services, health services, renovation of housing, moving people out of institutions into community-based solutions, etc). - That 25% of the future Structural Funds budget (336 billion euros) go to the ESF, and that Member States use at least 20% of the ESF for social inclusion initiatives. - To enhance partnerships between fund managing authorities and NGOs, in designing and implementing projects under the Structural Funds. The second speaker of this session, Stelios Kampouridis, working for the Ministry of Health and Social Solidarity in Greece, provided the perspective of a country which has been severely hit by the economic and financial crisis, with a focus on the costs of not tackling homelessness. Greece has no strategy to tackle homelessness, and is currently feeling the social impact as a result. There is no statistical data on homelessness in Greece, but there are clear indications from local authorities and NGOs that poverty and homelessness are on the increase. Moreover, homelessness profiles are changing from the traditional vulnerable social groups (immigrants/refugees, drug/alcohol users, mental health patients, and Roma populations) to the emergence of a neo-homeless population linked to unemployment, loss of housing, and lack of family support. Yet, in the current political context of restrictive economic policies, social policy is not a priority – Stelios indicated that an EU homelessness strategy from 2014-2020 would be a great support to national work on homelessness, especially as homelessness is also linked to migration in Greece, hence making homelessness a trans-national issue. Stelios highlighted the current paradox of the increasing need for social protection policies (see trends above) coupled with decreasing spending for social protection policies. The absence of a basic safety net is leading to a rapid decline in living standards and increasing vulnerability to social exclusion, which prompts the question: is this socially affordable for Greek society? For the first time therefore, Greece is trying to better coordinate its homelessness services and trying to give them a clear public policy framework to function in. A first step has been to agree on a common definition of homelessness, and to set up a committee to draft a homelessness action plan for Greece.

The last speaker of the opening session, Niccoló Rinaldi, Member of European Parliament (MEP) from Italy, shared his thoughts on the role of the European Parliament in tackling homelessness. He spoke of his encounters with homelessness in different EU cities, sometimes homelessness of entire families, explaining that these experiences only pushed him further to get support from the EU through his work in the European Parliament. He described different actions undertaken including recent good practice guidelines on homelessness policies that he issued to all local authorities of the regions he represents in Italy (central Italy), which include guidelines on using the EU Structural Funds and using the expertise of European networks like FEANTSA, HABITACT, the European Network of Homeless Health Workers, etc.

He organised a seminar in the European Parliament in February 2012 to draw political attention to the risks of EU free movement, and the situation of EU migrants who move from one country to another in search of work, but who end up on the streets; and hence the need for the EU to clarify the responsibilities of the EU, national and local authorities in dealing with this phenomenon. The European Parliament adopted a resolution in September 2011 calling for an EU homelessness strategy, yet no initiative has been taken by the European Commission so far. With a group of MEPs from other political parties, Rinaldi is keeping pressure on the European Commission and the Council of Ministers by submitting regular questions on homelessness. However, he admitted it can be difficult to shore up support from politicians on the fight against homelessness since homeless people do not usually vote. Other MEPs do support the fight against homelessness, but tend to rely on a select number of active MEPs to get political messages across.

http://feantsa.horus.be/code/EN/pg.asp?Page=1160

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Session 1: Planning and budgeting: How to prioritise?

The first plenary session included presentations on budgeting for a local homeless strategy, areas to make savings, and rethinking service provision models.

Malin Östling, from Gothenburg city council in Sweden (members of the HABITACT network), showed how budgets in Gothenburg are used to tackle homelessness, and namely the priority areas of investment. Budgets for local action on homelessness in Gothenburg are very much linked to national legislation on social services (local authorities are responsible for ensuring that people have a reasonable standard of living), to the right to shelter (guarantee for all of a “roof over your head”), and to the social/healthcare guidelines on homelessness regularly published by the National Board for Health and Welfare in Sweden. She started by showing that the budget in Gothenburg goes to certain types of actions and certain target groups linked to specific causes of homelessness: housing (homelessness is a

reflection of problems in the housing market linked to demography and construction), over-indebtedness (households with debts and poor credit records), and migration (namely newly arrived refugees). The budgets are especially targeted towards housing solutions for homeless people and social support. In terms of housing solutions, the budgets are firstly used to develop tools to assess supply and demand for supported housing such as “Boinvent” (a register of households which need assistance from social services), “Bolistan” (to centralise information about the housing supply and help social workers to rapidly locate apartments or rooms within the city), and a Placement Office (to help social workers link up with other social services to respond to emergencies). An important proportion of the budget is also used to develop different housing solutions, both within the city housing stock and with private landlord and investors. The housing ranges from different forms of supported housing (using different social service models, including Housing First) to mainstream housing. In terms of social support, different local NGOs are funded by the Gothenburg city homelessness budget to provide outreach services, floating support, and employability services. Challenges for the future (and hence possible new priorities for the budget) include better coordination of initiatives on homelessness, more structured cooperation with local NGOs providing support, developing a long-term homelessness strategy, and working towards a social work model based on a Housing First ethos and floating support.

In his presentation, Matt Harrison, Chief Executive Officer of Homeless Link in the UK, explained how homelessness services in England have responded to public spending cuts in the current economic recession. There have not been massive homelessness service closures (yet), but they are happening (4,6% of services in England closed in 2011-2012). Services are just about coping thanks to 10 years of public investment making it a strong and resilient sector, but the risks are growing and services are attempting to make savings in three main areas: organisational methods, staffing, and service delivery methods. Organisational savings are being made through mergers and collaborations (e.g. a medium-sized charity joins a large Housing Association to share some costs and win more contracts, but retains independent board and business plan), sharing of resources and outsourcing back-office services (e.g. 4 local agencies form a partnership to share back-office functions such as IT, HR, training and finance), and developing alternative income streams through social enterprises (e.g. organisation providing hostels for homeless people sets up a sustainable social enterprise to employ homeless service users, which serves to create routes into employment and possibly to make profits for the organisation in the long term). Staffing is typically the biggest element of a homelessness service budget in the UK (around 70% total budget). Changes in staffing include reviewing and reducing salaries, and changing terms and conditions (e.g. longer hours), reducing the number of staff, employing lower grade staff, reducing staff at night, using more volunteers. But Homeless Link fears a “race to the bottom” if savings in this area are not carried out carefully. Matt highlighted in his powerpoint slides the benefits, the risks, and mitigating actions possible. Changes are also being made in the way services are delivered: some less crucial services like lunch are stopped, services involve more members of the local community in the service delivery, support is delivered to groups rather than one-to-one, etc. No organisation wants to close its services, especially as demand for homelessness services is on the rise as a result of the recession.

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Volker Busch-Geertsema, researcher at the GISS institute in Germany and coordinator of the European Observatory on Homelessness, provided some financial arguments for normalising the housing and living conditions in the field of homelessness services. He took the Housing First model as an example of quick normalisation of living circumstances (i.e. going from the street to permanent housing with support, and by-passing temporary accommodation) as a better way to promote resettlement of homeless people, as opposed to the staircase model where people have to address their social or health problems in temporary accommodation before experiencing normal housing conditions. Criticism of the staircase model includes: the stress and dislocation linked to different stages, little privacy and autonomy, standardised support at different stages, skills learned in

structured congregate settings not always transferable to independent living, final move to permanent housing may take years and homeless client may get lost. Arguments in favour of Housing First include: no transitional steps required, access to mainstream housing, no requirement to address social/health problems before independent living, support provided in a stable home rather than in temporary accommodation, focus on recovery and community integration, and finally the emphasis on normal housing and living conditions. As well as being in line with fundamental rights and seemingly being more effective for the resettlement of homeless people, Volker suggested that focusing on normalisation of housing conditions (for instance through Housing First) could be cheaper as well. He gave evidence (especially from the US) of savings to be made in non-homelessness services such as ambulances, police detention, court proceedings, stays in emergency health wards and detox units, prison, mental hospitals, etc – all services which come into regular contact with homeless people without normalised housing conditions. He quoted research by Zaretzky et al. (2012) which shows that homelessness programmes produce positive outcomes for clients at relatively low costs, and provide significant savings for mainstream non-homelessness services, confirming the need for homelessness interventions. Volker however highlighted some issues with the cost arguments of normalisation of housing conditions of homeless people, namely that the cost is offset through Housing First only for “high cost” homeless people (i.e. who require complex support), that not all homeless people are heavy users of the health and justice system, that savings are made in departments external to the housing/homelessness departments, that duration of services plays an important role (a Housing First service might be required for years, while stays in prison, hospital are limited in time). He showed through a comparison of services for homeless people in Berlin that Housing First services are not necessarily cheap, but staircase services are not cheap either. While there are some costs involved for increased mobility of support teams in “housing-led” services (floating support in scattered housing), there are high costs for staircase systems and congregated housing linked to special requirements for concentrated accommodation (24-hour staffing, fire precautions, more potential conflicts, less use of self-help potential of clients). Volker called for more cost-effectiveness studies at EU level in order to show the positive financial effects of rapid normalisation of housing conditions of homeless people with different types of floating support.

Gabriella Civico, Director of the European Volunteer Centre, opened the discussion with the floor through a reflection on the pros and cons of using volunteers. The European Volunteer Centre elaborated guidelines for volunteer engagement in social services. Some key points include: 1. Volunteers should not replace paid staff, since they have different tasks and roles to accomplish. 2. Recognise the importance of the use of volunteers as one added value for public procurement of services. Gabriella highlighted some risks arising when volunteers replace paid jobs, namely decrease in staff income, reduced quality of services, and loss of the special qualities that volunteers bring with them. However, the use of volunteers (from the local community) in homelessness services can contribute to raise awareness on the problem - the more volunteers are involved, the more awareness will be raised in the local community.

Participants made comments in relation to: - The right to shelter in Sweden was considered by some as quite minimalist as an objective (as opposed to the right to housing in France). But this right is legally applicable in Sweden and local authorities must ensure that people have “a reasonable standard of living” so it is a little bit more than a minimalist objective. This is an important consideration when arguing for Housing First approaches to homelessness.

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- Volunteers: in some countries they play a crucial role in social services, especially in countries where social workers are not very well paid (as seems to be the case in Portugal). In France, volunteers have to be certified volunteers to meet certain standards. Recently 150,000 young people have been recruited in France for community work (“service civile”). - There were questions about the position of central government in relation to the spending cuts on homelessness at local level – in the UK, local authorities now have increasing freedom to spend local budgets as they choose, so central government is increasing local independence in this respect. Homeless Link understands the needs for spending cuts, but makes a distinction between proportionate and disproportionate cuts. - Consultation of service users in relation to reorganisation of services to cope with budgetary cuts. In practice, there should be consultation, but measures to respond to cuts are often implemented quickly and do not always allow time for consultation. - Coping with public spending cuts, but finding alternative donors in the community. Many services are trying to raise funds in different ways, but competition for funds is increasing as every sector is now asking for charitable support, which can make it harder to access private donor funding. - Housing First, and the need to consider the Work First approach which is currently used in a number of countries in the South of Europe. However, evidence from some countries shows that people need a home in order to be fully integrated in the job market. Meaningful occupation is crucial though, especially in the current context of high unemployment. Some pointed out that when evaluating Housing First approaches to homelessness, there should be different indicators of success (and not cost-effectiveness only) including evaluating the impact on quality of life as well. - Costs of homelessness can potentially be reduced in the health and prison sectors, but that implies new costs for local authorities who are responsible for developing homelessness policies and services. It is therefore crucial to ensure that money flows to local authorities, but how can this be implemented? Reference was made to the Netherlands where the 4 big cities of the country officially asked the national government to support them in the framework of a national strategy. Investing money at local level can of course reduce spending on other levels, but it is often difficult to reconcile national, regional and local levels – even with a national homelessness strategy, policy streams are very often separate.

Session 2: Cost-effectiveness and building the case for homelessness

This second plenary session on cost-effectiveness looked at how to ensure efficiency of spending on homelessness such as testing innovative approaches before mainstreaming them, showing social return on investment, and using cost-benefit analyses.

Alain Régnier, coordinator of French homelessness policy, gave an overview of the difficult economic context in France where budgets are being cut, and where social tensions are leading in some cases to security approaches to homelessness at local level (criminalisation, etc) rather than social policy approaches. In this context, it is all the more important to use cost-effective policies and services which will gain full public support, and one way of demonstrating cost-effectiveness in France is through the use of social policy experimentation to test a social policy approach in different local contexts which, if successful, can be mainstreamed nationally. This approach is more developed in anglo-saxon countries, but in France was used in the employment field and is now currently being used in the field of homelessness in relation to the role of stations in tackling homelessness and in relation to Housing First in the framework of a

3-year social policy experimentation programme called “Un chez-soi d'abord”. The French government decided to test Housing First based on evidence from the Pathways to Housing model in New York, using a health economics evaluation approach, that Housing First is a more cost-effective way to tackle chronic homelessness. The French Housing First programme is targeting 800 people (400 of whom are benefiting from Housing First services) on 4 test sites: Lille, Marseille, Toulouse and Paris. On each test site, 200 homeless people were identified (people with complex health and support needs), they met researchers and were informed about the social policy experimentation (giving their consent), they met the social policy experimentation team every 6 months for 2 years, then two groups were created on each site (one group benefiting from Housing First services and one group benefiting from traditional services). The social policy experimentation methodology is based on randomised control trials. The principle aim of the programme is to demonstrate the effectiveness of Housing First compared to traditional social and health services offered to homeless people with complex support

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needs, through the use of 3 indicators: number of stays in hospital, number of days of hospitalisation, and number of stays in emergency health services over 24 months. Additional aims are to evaluate services and resettlement processes (social network building around recovery, access to citizen rights, possibility of spreading the Housing First approach) and to evaluate the results of the programme through non-monetary indicators (health, social and housing indicators) and monetary indicators (cost-effectiveness). After a year of experimentation, positive trends include the fact that nobody has left the programme, good impact on resettlement of homeless people, reviewing working methods of social and health workers who are increasingly working in multi-disciplinary teams, positive impact of peer mediators, new cooperation between social, health and housing services. Negative trends include first challenges (violence, delinquency), difficulties in implementing the experimentation in the framework of existing national laws and regulations, some tensions between local practitioners in different sectors (public, NGO), and challenges relating to empowering homeless people in the programme.

The second presentation of this seminar session was given jointly by Emma Vallance from a social enterprise in Scotland called Forth Sector Development, and Rhona MacPherson from Dumfries and Galloway council in Scotland. They talked about demonstrating value in homelessness services using indicators such as social return on investment (SROI). Emma Vallance emphasised that integrating SROI in impact evaluations means having an overall perspective of the process of “change” from input>output>outcome>impact, and acknowledging that outcomes are the changes, benefits, learning or other effects that happen as a result of an activity. This not only allows services to communicate the social value of their work, but also helps build evidence of the impact of their work not only in financial terms

(price does not completely represent all the value of a service or activity), but rather by providing the full story of the service outcomes. SROI accounts for stakeholders' views of impact, and puts financial 'proxy' values on benefits not typically captured in a market economy (e.g. social or environmental benefits). For instance, taking people with mental health problems as a service target group, the outcome of the service can be improved mental health, the indicator can be level of use of mental health services, and the financial proxy can be the cost of counselling services. More here about the methodology. Rhona MacPherson went on to tell participants why Dumfries and Galloway council (population: 150.000) in Scotland introduced methods to evaluate service results and impact. The main drivers were: decreasing budgets, increasing demand, a desire to ensure spend achieves results, and a desire to capture innovation of providers. The first stage was to develop a commissioning and service delivery strategy for all local services, with a generalised emphasis on outcomes. The second stage was to prepare service providers for this culture shift to outcomes though consultations and conferences. The third stage involved training local authority staff on this new way of working. Stage 4 aimed to test new outcomes based methods through tenders, to collect data on what does and doesn't work. Main lessons learned: the harsh reality of outcomes-based tendering is a culture shock that will be resisted, the importance of setting the right kind of outcomes at each level of service provision (e.g. cannot set strategic outcomes for front-line staff, etc). The reporting of outcomes is being introduced at different levels from outcomes based on national priorities to outcomes of third sector service providers to the impact on service users and community stakeholders (using front line user data in order for the impact measurement to be meaningful).

John Van Leerdam, from the Cebeon research institute in The Netherlands, presented the findings of a national cost-benefit analysis of tackling homelessness in The Netherlands. He started by explaining why the study was commissioned in the first place – namely linked to the increased pressure on budgets, the need to secure budgets for the second phase of the national homelessness strategy led by the 4 main cities in the Netherlands (referred to as G4), and the shifting focus from care/cure to prevention and social support. The aims of the research were to quantify the main benefits of homelessness policies for other fields, to recommend ways of improving homelessness policies and services, and to develop a framework for cost-benefit analysis.

John then went on to describe the methodology of the research i.e. to distinguish between different subpopulations and their use of public services, to determine the main movements between subpopulations, and finally to quantify the benefits of these movements as saved expenses for public services.

http://www.socialimpactscotland.org.uk/media/1200/SROI-%20investing%20in%20impact.pdf

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Cebeon examined the movements of the potentially homeless, actual homeless and residential homeless between homelessness services (prevention, guidance, shelter and rehabilitation) and non-homelessness services (healthcare, law&order, employment&income, housing). The main findings of the research show that prevention is better and cheaper than cure, being in shelter is better and cheaper than being in the street, and effective policy requires efforts of all partners in the homelessness chain. The main benefits include avoided costs of services like semi-clinical cure (health care policy), property crimes and police intervention (law and order), and eviction (housing policy). A quantitative result of the research is that 1 euro spent by homelessness services avoids about 2,2 euro of costs in non-homelessness services. Danuta Jazłowiecka, Member of European Parliament from Poland, then opened the discussion with the floor by presenting her ideas on a social investment pact for Europe, to show the value of social policies and systems. She deplored the fact that the majority of recent responses to the crisis lack a social and employment policy dimension. The 2012 Annual Growth Survey as well as the Joint Employment Report show, that fiscal consolidation is still treated as a priority while social, employment and education targets of the Europe 2020 Strategy are not being sufficiently addressed by many Member States. Therefore she believes that in order to bring back sustainable growth to Europe and to address all pressing social problems including homelessness, it is imperative to introduce a well targeted EU social investment strategy, that should aim at preparing individuals, families and societies to adapt to difficult economic conditions and labour market demands. She believes that only by providing citizens with instruments and skills will Europe be able to lift people out of social exclusion back to being fully active in society. In the report that Danuta is preparing with the Employment and Social Committee in the European Parliament, she underlines the pressing need to create a coordinated EU approach towards social investments through a “social investment pact”. Participants made comments in relation to: -The centralised/national use of social policy experimentation and the challenges associated with introducing a successfully experimented policy in different local contexts. In France, local authorities were involved in the Housing First programme from the very start through a call for interest to take part in the programme, and were consulted in each phase of decision-making and implementation. The aim is to place local projects in a national context. -The use of social policy evaluation and social policy experimentation in the current political context of spending cuts where the welfare state is being reformed makes it all the more crucial to develop evaluation and experimentations in a long-term perspective. -In relation to measuring the outcomes of policies (intended/unintended positive outcomes, and unintended negative outcomes) mentioned in the presentation on SROI, it was highlighted that in some cases policies have intended negative outcomes, for instance in relation to voluntary returns of homeless migrants. In Denmark, policies have negative outcomes for homeless migrants so that calculating social return on investment for this part of the homeless population may be harder. Of course, assessing the outcomes of services depends on the perspective – a negative outcome for one organisation can be considered positive by another organisation. -A comment was made about the importance of capturing innovation in service providers, and the fact that outcomes-based service commissioning can potentially hinder innovation at grass-roots level. -To what extent does SROI measurement take staff perspective into account: SROI is not only addressed from the service user’s perspective, impact on other stakeholders (including staff) is also measured. Someone pointed out that working with homeless people can bring about positive changes in staff and volunteers as well, and should be captured in outcome measurement. -The definition of “potentially homeless” used in the Dutch cost-benefit analysis. The definition was based on the number of actual evictions of the previous year. With the help of some experts, they assessed the most realistic number of potentially homeless people. So there is a distinction between people threatened with eviction who found a housing solution, and people threatened with eviction who needed support. One participant pointed out that ETHOS – European Typology of Homelessness and housing exclusion – is a useful reference for assessing potential homelessness/people at risk of homelessness. -In relation to the findings of the cost-benefit study in the Netherlands, John Van Leerdam was asked about the finding indicating that shelters are better and cheaper than rough sleeping, and the meaning of the word “shelter”. The use of “shelter” here does not mean the most basic form of shelter, but rather refers to all supported housing solutions.

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Session 3: Diversification of funding sources

This last session looked at the different ways of funding homeless policy such as sharing the costs with other authorities (between cities), organising business groups into policy goals, and the potential of social impact bonds.

Sara Baldisserri from Fondazione Casa Lucca in Tuscany, Italy, described the local experience of pooling resources to share the costs of providing housing solutions for vulnerable groups. She started by describing the context in which local organisations decided to join forces: economic crisis and increasing housing need, insufficient tools and infrastructure, and complete absence of a political vision for social housing. A social rental agency was set up in 2007 as an experimentation to fill gaps in the housing market, but with the increasing housing needs as a result of the financial crisis, local authorities stopped thinking only of their local area and started linking up with other organisations over a wider territory in the framework of a new Foundation: Fondazione Casa Lucca (FCL), which is a Foundation based on a partnership of financial (bank foundations) and non-financial organisations (local authorities and NGOs). Common objectives of

FCL include the creation of a social housing network which can rapidly find housing solutions for vulnerable groups, the development of a real-estate portfolio for the region, and commissioning research on housing needs on given territory.

Simon Sheehan, Director of the Hilton in the Community Foundation in Europe, reflected on the role of business groups in homeless policy, providing one corporate foundation's response to the issue of homelessness. The Foundation provides grants to organisations active in all 27 countries of the EU through a local giving model which involves supporting young people in each country through hotel fund-raising. Hilton volunteers choose to focus grant support on four core areas: disabled children, life-limited children, homelessness, and children in hospital. There is a natural synergy with hotels in terms of providing employability, skill sharing, and in-kind giving. Projects aimed at homeless youth have covered initiatives of formal training and accredited courses, life-skills training, peer education to prevent homelessness, volunteering hosting costs for emergency accommodation, and refurbishment projects (e.g. kitchens, bedrooms, IT provision). As for the role of business groups in tackling homelessness, they can provide gateways to career advice and possible employment, in recognising their collective responsibility they can be a possible source of volunteer mentors for young people. However, Simon highlighted some key issues in engaging business in homelessness policy such as the need to show businesses the return on investment, the need to tell a story to help people relate better to the realities of homelessness, the need to build capacity of business staff to work with vulnerable groups, etc.

The last presentation of this session was given by Frank Lee, responsible for Holding Funds and Advisory for Northern Europe in the European Investment Bank (EIB). Frank talked about the potential for social impact bonds to attract investors in the delivery of social services. The EIB currently manages 19 JESSICA funds across Europe, which are ERDF-funded, with investment predominantly focused on physical interventions in urban areas. Frank believes there is scope to combine and integrate ESF funds in urban investment strategies. He referred to payment by results programmes such as pre-employment intervention programmes to support drug users, homeless people, and troubled families. The idea is that if the interventions are successful the payment received from Government/Municipalities can be used to repay investors and/or be recycled to be used again for further intervention. He referred to examples in the UK such as the Broadway

Property Fund (London) which aims to address shortages in social housing by purchasing property, a process managed by a financial intermediary which comprises a range of private investors with social objectives, envisaging a 5% return on investment. Any return on investment can then be used by the social enterprise arm of Broadway to provide support to tenants. The social impact bond model is still in its infancy, but is being tested in the US and the UK – the primary aim is to raise private investment capital to fund prevention and early intervention programmes that reduce the need for more expensive “crisis” responses. But these innovative financial instruments need public ‘’seed’’ funding to prove

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the concept works, develop track record and eventually mainstream the instruments in the capital markets. They are currently being tested in fields such as the UK criminal justice system and social enterprise. There is potential in introducing social impact bonds in the affordable housing sector, and the 2014-2020 Structural Funds programme could be useful to test social impact bond investment approaches. Muriel Rabau, Vice-Chair of EU Social Protection Committee (SPC), opened the discussion by presenting the work of the SPC on the social impact of the crisis, and the focus on various issues including child poverty, homelessness, active inclusion of people furthest away from the labour market, and social inclusion of migrants. Participants made comments in relation to: -Questions were asked on ways to convince the business world to support the fight against homelessness in very concrete ways such as offering free rooms for homeless people (in the case of hotel chains), providing some funding or meeting space for homeless people to cooperate at EU level through the HOPE network. The question was also put differently: what can NGOs and local authorities offer business in exchange for investment? Demonstrating value for money was considered crucial (namely the impact of services on the people concerned but also on the wider community, and articulating a clear story). -The idea of having social impact bonds in homeless services and the need to aim for outcomes based on the nature of the service. For instance, there is a huge difference between the aims of a Housing First project and the aims of a street outreach project. The approach to homelessness is not so relevant in social impact bonds – the most important thing is for the project to save government money. -Comments were made about the need to use the full potential of EIB instruments like JESSICA, as this has not necessarily been the case in all EU countries. -There were questions about the interest rates of EIB loans, but the interest rates are determined by each Member State (which is how the JESSICA programme is run). It was pointed out that EU State Aid legislation was important to consider in this context, namely that there are specific conditions to fulfil in order to benefit from EIB loans. -In terms of introducing social impact bonds, reference was made to the sister organisation of the EIB which is the European Investment Fund which has been working with DG Enterprise of the European Commission on raising funds from institutional investors in relation to social enterprises.

Conclusions

In his conclusions, FEANTSA Director Freek Spinnewijn highlighted the following key messages from each session. -In the Introductory session, MEP Niccoló Rinaldi said that the EU should do more to support national governments to address homelessness and the European Parliament resolution calling for an EU homelessness strategy gives key recommendations in this respect. The representative from the Greek government, Stelios Kampouridis, said that Greece is willing to step up efforts to address homelessness but needs support - the austerity measures which in part originate from the EU make it very difficult for Greece to deliver on its good will. The European Commission (represented by Gábor Tóth) says that the EU can support national governments to address homelessness, mainly through making funding available from the ESF and the ERDF.

-Session 1 on planning and budgeting. The local authority representative from Gothenburg, Malin Östling, said that local authorities need to rethink budgetary priorities in the area of homelessness to ensure maximum impact of homelessness services and policies. The NGO representative, Matt Harrison from Homeless Link, gave evidence that savings in the homelessness sector are possible and that the negative effects of saving strategies can be mitigated to a certain extent. The academic representative, Volker Busch-Geertsema from GISS in Germany, argued that savings would be most useful and sustainable by introducing more housing-led approaches to homelessness that aim to rapidly normalise the housing conditions of homeless people.

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-Session 2 on cost-effectiveness. A general message from this session was that savings and increasing cost-effectiveness should happen on the basis of evidence and this session showed different methods to provide the evidence: social policy experimentation (which should and is likely to remain an EU priority) as presented by the French representative Alain Régnier; social return on investment (which could be an important element of the future EU social investment pact) which is currently being introduced in parts of Scotland as highlighted in the joint presentation by Emma Vallance and Rhona MacPherson; and cost-benefit analyses, which are still rare in Europe in the field of social/homelessness policies, as carried out by the Cebeon institute in The Netherlands (there is a clear research gap to fill here at EU level). -Session 3 on diversification of funding sources. The general message from this session was that next to savings, we need to further diversify funding sources for homelessness services and policies, namely through public-private partnerships at local level as we saw with the example of the Fondazione Casa Lucca presented by Sara Baldisserri, through partnerships in the framework of corporate social responsibility as Simon Sheehan from the Hilton in the Community Foundation demonstrated is possible, and through cooperation with other organisations to test the relevance of new financial instruments such as social impact bonds, which is the intention of the European Investment Bank through different models presented by Frank Lee. On the basis of discussions and recommendations made during the seminar, FEANTSA will continue to: - Develop and promote Housing-led approaches to homelessness; - Further develop innovative ways to fund homelessness services without reducing the responsibility of public authorities for this problem; - Further lobby for an EU homelessness strategy as called for by the European Parliament in 2011. From these conclusions, Freek Spinnewijn made some general remarks and recommendations for future action at EU level. To the European Union -Homelessness is a very urgent problem/growing in many countries; -There is no reason to be complacent because there is room for policy progress which can deliver better outcomes for homeless people and for public spending; -We should grasp the potential for cooperation at EU level. To the Social Protection Committee -Ensure the European Commission makes progress in developing EU action on homelessness.

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Annex I: ETHOS – European Typology of Homelessness and housing exclusion

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Annex II: Twitter

The 8 June 2012 seminar was followed by many and re-tweeted by many.

Follow us on Twitter for future events and more information about homelessness http://twitter.com/#!/FEANTSA

http://twitter.com/#!/FEANTSA

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FEANTSA is supported by the European Community Programme for Employment and Social Solidarity (2007-2013).

This programme was established to financially support the implementation of the objectives of the European Union in the employment and social affairs area, as set out in the Social Agenda, and thereby contribute to the achievement of the Lisbon Strategy goals in these fields. The seven-year Programme targets all stakeholders who can help shape the development of appropriate and effective employment and social legislation and policies, across the EU-27, EFTA and EU candidate and pre-candidate countries. To that effect, PROGRESS purports at: providing analysis and policy advice on employment, social solidarity and gender equality policy areas; monitoring and reporting on the implementation of EU legislation and policies in employment, social solidarity and gender equality policy areas; promoting policy transfer, learning and support among Member States on EU objectives and priorities; and relaying the views of the stakeholders and society at large.

For more information see: http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=327&langld=en

FEANTSA is supported financially by the European Commission. The views expressed herein are those of

the authors and the Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained herein.

http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=327&langld=en

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