“Would you like a new home? No catch, no gimmick”

 It was one of the coldest nights of the year in New York City, but much like any other night it didn’t change the fact that the homeless remained homeless. On the corner of Ludlow and Hester in Lower Manhattan a homeless man is woken from his modest cardboard dwelling, ‘Good evening Jacob, would you like a new home? No catch, no gimmick.”

The Housing first model is an innovative and progressive program that is revolutionising the way the world addresses homelessness. Rather than dealing with the immediate symptoms that is associated with being homeless such as mental illness and drug dependency, it seeks to provide a solution by providing a person with their own permanent residence straight up, no payment, no hard questions. Seems crazy right?

Under the premise that society are essentially paying four times the amount of money it costs to house a homeless person per week through hospital fees and support services, it’s not such a crazy idea after all when you do the math.

For many years, specialist service providers have been scratching their heads, believing that if they could offer homeless people the appropriate medical and mental care, job training and addiction counselling that they might be able to pull that person out of the vicious cycle of homelessness. It was only once they flipped the equation that they started to see the real results.

The housing first model ultimately promotes that a homeless person is most capable of success in all aspects of life when they have a safe and stable environment to call home. The innovative model breeds a sense of independence and self sufficiency and is a true solution to ending the achievable goal of homelessness worldwide.

For more Solutions to End Homelessness come and pay a visit to the upcoming Melbourne conference on  29^th & 30^th October.  

photo credit: Transformer18 via photopin cc