“Arriving at home” – this is the name of an initiative of the Federal Homeless Aid Association (BAWO) together with the Ministry of Social Affairs, which wants to provide 240 apartments to around 600 people at risk of poverty by the end of April. The total volume of the project is 2.65 million euros, all of which comes from the ministry.
“Homelessness and homelessness are among the worst forms of poverty,” emphasized Minister of Social Affairs Wolfgang Mückstein (Greens) at the presentation of the initiative on Thursday. And the figures show that homeless people die on average twenty years earlier than the average Austrian. Homelessness could “affect us all,” said the Minister of Social Affairs. The reasons are varied.
22,000 people were homeless before the outbreak of the pandemic, according to Mückstein: “We do not know how high the number of unreported cases is.” After the pandemic, experts fear a wave of evictions. The Minister of Social Affairs emphasized that one must now “take consistent countermeasures.”
Also in Upper Austria
As BAWO chairwoman and “nineerhaus” managing director Elisabeth Hammer explained, the initiative is based on the internationally successful “Housing First” approach. This means that homeless people receive structured access to an affordable apartment with their own rental agreement and – if desired – are supported by social work. The current project is running in five federal states, namely Vienna, Carinthia, Burgenland, Upper Austria and Lower Austria.
To combat homelessness, an interaction between housing and social policy is essential, as it is a “structural issue”. Therefore, we also have to work on structural solutions, argued Hammer. The pandemic makes the need once again clearly visible. “Homelessness is more common than we think. The problem is much more extensive than we hope,” said Hammer, who is looking forward to the handover of the first apartment key and to the fact that this project will set an example and that an inclusive housing market will provide people with permanent space.
Bernd Rießland, chairman of the non-profit building association, was “happy” about the initiative and emphasized the “good cooperation”. Bringing people and affordable housing together is the core business of non-profit housing. The non-profit sector creates living space for the entire middle class and all lower income groups and ensures distribution and mixing.
