Black were privileged to have been invited to join the team from Jimmy’s homeless charity in Cambridge on their trip to Helsinki, Finland, to lean about the Housing First work that has been promoted by the Y Foundation.
We visited three buildings across the city where previously homeless residents were provided with their own apartments, rather than be accommodated in temporary hostel accommodation. You get a front door key to the building, a personal letterbox and a tenancy agreement, placing responsibility onto the residents to manage their own lives. High levels of support are on hand to address drug and alcohol dependencies, in a non judgemental environment free of criminal liabilities for staff.
Speaking with tenants and seeing both their own personal spaces and communal areas where work brought people together, this alternative approach to addressing homelessness offered a model to test out in the UK.
