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Caring for the Homeless and the Poor in Greece: Implications for the Future of Social Protection and Social Inclusion»

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Caring for the Homeless and the Poor in Greece: Implications for the Future of Social Protection and Social Inclusion» «Caring for the Homeless and the Poor in Greece: Implications for the Future of Social Protection and Social Inclusion» Executive Summary Arapoglou V.P., Gounis K., Assistant Professors, Department of sociology University of Crete With the assistance of Siatitsa D., PhD candidate, National Technical University of Athens Rethymno, October 2014 Acknowledgement: Research has been supported by the Hellenic Observatory at the LSE and the National Bank of Greece - Research Innovation Fund on South East Europe (NBG Research Call 2- 2013). The views expressed in this text are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Hellenic Observatory or the National Bank of Greece. The final report of the project is available upon request from the authors or the Hellenic Observatory. This is the executive summary of the report presenting findings from the study “Caring for the homeless and the poor in Greece: implications for the future of social protection and social inclusion,” which was supported by the Hellenic Observatory at the LSE and the National Bank of Greece Research Innovation Fund on South East Europe Crete. The research was carried out between November 2013 and October 2014. The aim of the research, divided into two distinct work packages, was: a) in “WP1: Mapping homelessness, shelter and service provisions in Athens,” to provide estimates of housing deprivation and homelessness and to map their spatial distribution,in connection with the services that are addressed to the affected populations, in the metropolitan region of the city of Athens; and b) in “WP2: Exploring the efficacy of existing provisions and social innovation strategies,”to highlight innovative policies to tackle homelessness, which have been introduced during the last decade in the US and Europe, and discuss the applicability of diverse forms of supported housing schemes to Greece. The core of the research relating to WP1 was a survey amongst the most significant and largest shelter and other homeless services providers in the wider metropolitan area of Athens. The overall aim of the research and the design of the survey, and subsequently the findings, werepresented and discussed in workshops with representatives of local authorities, the ministries of Health and Employment, the Greek Housing Network, and the Greek Anti Poverty Network. Forty organisations were asked to complete the survey and 25 of these responded. (Amongst those unable to respond were the welfare agencies of the Church of Greece, some charities administering community homes for children and juveniles, and one shelter for asylum seekers.) The twenty-five organisations that completed the survey were implementing a total of 77 projects of direct assistance, addressing the needs of approximately 120,000 people – 30 schemes of housing assistance and 47 schemes providing access to other elementary resources. The survey collected a variety of diverse data – numbers of accommodation units; types of services offered, numbers of individuals accommodated and/or served in 2013; data on shelter capacity, costs, [1] sources of finance and personnel; and open questions to capture the effects of austerity on both the organisations and the people they serve. The survey data were supplemented and elaborated with on site visits and fourteen (14) in-depth interviews with directors and administrative personnel of shelters, clinics, and day centres, and four (4) interviews with central administration organisations: the National Centre of Social Solidarity and the Ministry of Employment. Research also accomplished the consolidation of a database that maps the spatial distribution of various levels of housing inadequacy and insecurity. The database combines variables mainly derived from the registries of mental health and welfare agencies in Greece, the reports of the Greek Ombudsman, and the 2011 census on population and housing conditions. Relating to WP2, three case studies with NGOs examined the challenges for expanding supported housing schemes in Greece. Focus groups with the personnel of each organisation explored their experiences from the daily operation of shelters and the applicability of supported housing schemes to meet the complex needs of the homeless. The body of the report is divided into two parts (a total of 8 chapters, including the introduction and the conclusions and recommendations). Part I addresses the questions relating to WP1, while Part II presents the three case studies with NGOs after a review, a) of international developments regarding policy changes and innovations, and b) of the key policies, gaps in delivery of services, and demands for change in Greece since the onset of the current crisis. Following the introduction in CHAPTER 1, which specifies the objectives of the research, the methodologies adopted, and the process of completing the various phases, as outlined above, CHAPTER 2 reviews the literature relevant to the documentation of homelessness in the US and Europe. The main points of this discussion regarding the US include an appraisal of a shift into perceiving homelessness as a housing issue, rather than a “cultural” [2] phenomenon; and an assessment of attempts to provide estimates and to document the demographics of the homeless population, which highlight their diversity, as against former perceptions of a homogeneous group of social deviants and/or dropouts. InEurope, on the other side, homelessness is linked to social exclusion and to the state of precariousness, following the crisisand demiseof the welfare state. There is a lack of reliable quantitative data, while the formation of FEANTSA (European Federation of National Organisations working with the Homeless)and the development of the ETHOS typology(European Typology on Homelessness and Housing Exclusion) constitute significant first attempts to measure the different types of housing exclusion and homelessness. CHAPTER 3 assesses existing evidence and the most recent research to document the extent of homelessness in Greece, noting the limitations of available data, especially as relating to the proposed differentiation between the ‘old’ and the ‘new homeless.’ CHAPTER 4 presents estimates and maps different forms of homelessness and housing deprivation in Athensbased,a) on a survey of service providers – organisations that operate shelter facilities and/or other types of relief to the poor; and b) on secondary sources, by using the European Typology of Homelessness and Housing Exclusion (ETHOS) developed by FEANTSA and a taxonomy of visible and invisible homelessness proposed by Kim Hopper. Overall the measures and estimates following ETHOS indicate: An increase in the roofless population since 2009/2010, which seems to have been halted during 2013. Excessive levels of insecure and inadequate housing, which generate demands that can hardly be met. A significant increase in numbers concerns people in accommodation for the homeless, both Greeks and immigrants. This can be taken to reflect the increase in the needs expressed from a hidden homeless population to which the system of care responds in a partial and fragmented manner. [3] By utilising Hopper’s visible-invisible and formal-informal axes in mapping the spaces of homelessness, the report provides estimatesthat speak to the magnitude of the problem in the Athens metropolitan area: Invisible informal: Depending on how narrow or how broad the applied (ETHOS) criteria, anywhere between 93,920 to 514,000 individuals are estimated to subsist in the face ofextremelydifficult conditionsand be exposed tohigh risk of becoming literally homeless if some additionalfactor is activated(e.g. major health problem, eviction, inability to be hosted from kin or friends, loss of supportpersons or breaking ofinterpersonalbonds, etc.). Invisible formal homelessness,which affects approximately 9,000 people, includes the useof unsuitableaccommodationin public institutionsand residential care(hospitals, mental institutions, homes for the elderly poor, child careinstitutions) orcontainment(detention centres, prisons) in deviation fromtheir primaryfunction orunjustifiedextension ofstayordischargewithout planning for accommodation. Visible formal homelessness, which concerns approximately 4,400 people, refers to the spaces explicitly designated as spaces of accommodation for the homeless – primarily of an emergency type such as shelters, or an extremely limited type of pilot schemes for supported housing. Visible informal homelessnessconcerns the range of 1.200 to 2.360 persons estimated to have been chronically or periodically living in the streets. Our findings, adapting the ETHOS typology developed by FEANTSA, demonstrate a significant rise of visible homelessness and an excessive magnitude of hidden poverty, housing inadequacy, and insecurity, which generate demands that hardly can be met. A total number of 17,800 people in the wider metropolitan area of Athens were estimated to have been in the categories of rooflessness and houselessness of ETHOS during 2013. However, this figure is only a fragment of the whole picture: in a metropolis of 3.8 million people, 305,000 Greek and 209,000 foreign nationals in privately rented accommodation face the risks of poverty and social exclusion as defined by Eurostat. [4] The total figure of 514,000 individuals can be taken as an estimate of insecurely and inadequately housed individuals whose trajectories into and out of visible homelessness depend on strict regulations for receipt of assistance and complex
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