The Housing First project in Bratislava continues as more NGOs cooperate with the city

Bratislava is expanding its Housing First project aimed at ending homelessness. The city has set aside a further ten flats for people in need, where they will become new tenants. The city will work with more non-profit organisations involved in social housing support. On Tuesday representatives of the city signed a memorandum on cooperation with the non-profit organisations Depaul Slovakia and OZ Odysseus. They joined the organisations Proti prúdu, OZ Vagus and Návrat o.z., with which the city has been working on a project to end homelessness for a long time.

In 2020, Bratislava was one of the first municipalities in Slovakia to launch a pilot project to end homelessness through affordable rental housing and social support. The project provides housing to homeless families and homeless people with disabilities or other disadvantages. The clients become ordinary tenants who pay standard rent for their accommodation. The project also includes intensive social counselling aimed specifically at maintaining housing, addressing health problems, stabilising incomes, or developing community.

”I am very happy that Bratislava has joined the Housing First project and we are gradually expanding the number of flats as far as possible. Experience from abroad has shown that providing housing is usually more profitable in terms of public funding and costs than the subsequent care for homeless people. We are working systematically to develop the city's housing stock and end housing need and homelessness,“ says Matúš Vallo, Mayor of Bratislava.

”The city of Helsinki shows us the way to gradually end homelessness in the city through consistent social field work, housing first and systematic state support for housing development. Bratislava needs hundreds of new flats to meet the demand for housing in the city's waiting lists and to improve housing affordability,“ adds Lenka Antalová Plavuchová, Deputy Mayor.

The city allocated nine flats for nine households - six individuals and three families from the Fortuna dormitory - to the pilot project. According to the results so far, the project has been successful - all households have retained their housing. Once housing has been stabilised, tenants have begun to address their health, financial situation or relationships with their loved ones and community.

The city also cooperated with three non-profit organizations - OZ Návrat, OZ Proti Prúddu and OZ Vagus, which provided social counselling directly in the flats. Based on the signed Memorandum of Cooperation, the city will cooperate with a total of five organisations in the project including Depaul Slovakia and OZ Odyseus.

”We believe it is very important that rental housing is made available to the most vulnerable communities. It is important that the city is involved in promoting the right to housing as a fundamental human right, specifically by making rental housing available to the most vulnerable target groups, actively ending homelessness in Bratislava. We still have a lot to do, but it is much easier if the city and civil society work together,“ says Dominika Jašeková from OZ Odyseus.

“We appreciate that the City Hall has decided to continue with a proven way to end homelessness. Experience from abroad and even from Slovakia shows that projects built on the Housing First principles or their local adaptations are the way out from the street. Research shows that when homeless people are integrated through housing, they eventually cost the state and local governments much less, as they are no longer dependent on their social systems so much, because they learn to stand on their own feet,” explains Petra Červená from OZ Vagus.

Bratislava has allocated another ten flats from its city flats. The new tenants - two families from the city's Fortuna dormitory and eight individuals - are expected to move in later this year. Based on this project experience, the city will also adapt the development of services related to social support and ending housing destitution and homelessness.

The city is comprehensively improving the situation in rental housing and the development of the urban housing stock. The city acquires new flats by renovating older flats or buildings, building new ones, cooperating with the private sector or buying flats on the free market. Currently, a project is under construction at Muchovo Square in Petržalka, where 103 municipal rental and replacement flats will be built. Construction of another residential building on Terchovská Street in Ružinov, which will provide 83 flats, is planned to start in 2023. Another 100 rental flats will be added in the upcoming multifunctional zone Janíkov dvor, where the city presented the results of an architectural and urban planning study in July.