Problem addressed

In Brno, Czechia, over 400 families with children were living in temporary accommodation or asylum housing in 2016, most of those families being Roma. Rapidly increasing property prices, indebtedness, evictions, and family instability and breakdown - combined with lack of affordable rental housing - are the drivers of long-term housing poverty. Once families are homeless, they are perceived by private landlords as unsuitable, and therefore have limited access to the housing market.

Innovative solution

The European Social Fund (ESF)-supported Rapid Re-housing project recognises that people with housing needs face many other problems, such as unemployment, problems related to childcare, and mental health issues, and offers them unconditional housing support to get them back on their feet. Rapid Re-housing follows the innovative Housing First approach. Unlike typical housing support policies that include restrictions and conditionalities, this approach offers unrestricted help to people with housing needs, without the pressure of complying with certain rules, such as having to find employment. It is based on the principle that housing is a fundamental right for all and should not have to be “earned” by solving individual problems. Brno is the first Czech city to implement a project based on this approach and adapted to the local context.

Rapid Re-housing keeps people in need in full control of their situation. Families are offered housing and guidance, but social services do not interfere in any way with their life choices regarding employment, their children’s schooling, or finance management. Rapid Re-housing sees housing as the starting point, rather than the ending point, in solving the problem of homelessness.

Brno city launched the project in 2006. As part of the first phase, 421 families were identified as having housing needs, being homeless or living in private hostels, shelters and indecent conditions. Two thirds of these families were Roma. During the first year, 50 families were randomly selected and provided with social council housing at a reduced rent (around 50% of the usual rent). The only requirement for families to access the housing was to pay rent, maintain good relationships with their neighbours and cooperate with social workers.

In addition to housing, the city provided selected families with financial support (where needed) and counselling, throughout the year. The service was provided by the local NGO IQ ROMA SERVIS, Z.S, which has a good understanding of the Roma situation in the region. Social workers from the NGO helped families settle into their new houses, visited them regularly, and provided them with guidance to ensure they could keep their housing in the long-term.

The Action Plan of Brno City for 2018–2025 commits to allocating up to 10% of available flats for this intervention – 75 flats every year – through renovating flats that are not in use and, in the long-term, through investing in and building new flats for social purposes. As the city can only sustain a certain amount of social housing, there are eligibility criteria to determine who can live in it. Once families can sustain themselves, and no longer meet those criteria, they move out from the social housing. By following this approach, the city strives to end homelessness by 2025.

Brno Rapid Re-housing is the first social innovation project in the Czech Republic that uses a randomised controlled trial to observe and measure the impact of social interventions. To understand the impact of the intervention, an additional 100 families facing homelessness were selected into a control group and were followed throughout the year. The social experiment was monitored by researchers from Ostrava University, responsible for the final evaluation study.

Key results and benefits

The results have exceeded expectations. Following the first year of intervention, 96% of families (48 out of 50) were able to stabilise their housing situation, pay rent regularly and remain in the council flat. The regained stability of the families improved their overall wellbeing and quality of life. They reported decreased sleeping problems, asthma and other illnesses related to poor living conditions, and a decrease in the level of stress among mothers. Before the intervention, 39% of mothers reported experiencing high levels of stress that prevented them from focusing on parenting, a proportion that was significantly smaller after the intervention. Furthermore, the project decreased the chance of children going to sleep hungry by 2.4 times.

The intervention also reunited families. Before the intervention, more than 40% of families were separated due to their housing situation. Overall, the number of children living in children’s homes or with relatives decreased by 7%. The 118 children in the intervention group spent 130 months less in social care/children’s homes, separated from their parents. Regained privacy and a stable family environment improved the families’ approaches towards the education of their children. 11% of the children reported a more positive approach to schooling compared to the base line. These results demonstrate that in order to integrate homeless people back into society, they must first be provided with stable housing, after which they will be able to develop their lives further.

Potential for mainstreaming

Rapid Re-housing has received funding from the European Social Fund. The city of Brno co-financed 5% of the total budget and allocated 50 council flats for the experiment. Buy-in from, and cooperation with, local authorities is thus an important condition for transferring the project to another context. The public cost-saving potential of the project may help in guaranteeing this. Researchers comparing the cost paid by the state for a family in the intervention group and for a family benefitting from mainstream support services found that for each family in the intervention group, Kč 31 500 (EUR 1 200) of public resources per year were saved, representing a total of around EUR 70 000 of savings per year for the first cohort of 50 families alone.

The Rapid Re-housing approach is a strong example of a Housing First approach to bringing people out of homelessness. It combines housing with holistic support, providing a sustainable solution to ending homelessness in a systematic way. The approach is transferrable to other countries, and in fact originated in the United States where ‘Pathways to Housing’ was developed in New York. This has quickly spread across the United States, Canada, New Zealand and European countries. Another 13 Czech cities are interested in using the EU structural funds and implementing a similar strategy to end homelessness.

The relevance of the approach was acknowledged in 2018 when Rapid Re-housing was awarded the Sozial Marie Prize. In 2017, the project also received an Ending Homelessness Award from the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless (FEANTSA) for the best project dealing with homelessness.