Poland

Up to the end of 2015 Housing First has not been implemented in Poland. But there were quite a few attempts:

Pilot implementations within Local Standards for Exiting Homelessness Systemic Project 2007-2013

LSEH Systemic Project was implemented by a group of homelessness service providers in cooperation with Polish Ministry of Labour and Social Policy. The goal was to improve quality of services by standardising them on national level. The standards were drafted and put to the test by 19 local partnerships.

In the Draft LSEH Model, Housing First was declared to be one of alternative paradigms for the system and described as “unconditional housing for every homeless person”. Remaining paradigms were “staircase”, “patette” and “community” model. However, services described within all models do not include HF programmes and consist of warming up rooms, nightshelters, shelters, homes and few ambulatory services like soupkichens, information centres etc.

Still Housing First was put to the test by two Local Partnerships:

Municipality Nowe

• 1 person chosen based on three criteria: high institutinal costs, causing high social problems, having prospects for income
• Criteria for holding the apt: monthly payments, cooperation with social workers and staff

Kielce, Pomost Fundation

• 6 people of 50 who applied (many not homeless, wanted to improve housing situation), (no long term rough sleepers with multiple needs)
• major criteria for selection: difficult housing situation, no analysis of past housing situations eg. rough sleeping, shelter rejections, etc.; no analysis of psychological profile
• no criteria for clients eg. indywidual programme for getting out of homelessness, employment, etc., no by-law,
• Support: job advisor, family assistant, psychologist, coordinator

LSEH Evaluation („Scientific Audit”) provides no information on effectiveness of above implementations of HF; staircase model got better opinions but Evaluation Report provides no conclusions.

Proposal of the Camillian Mission of Social Assistance to the Municipality of Warsaw 2013

In June 2013 CMSA filed a proposal to the Municipality of Warsaw for creating a partnership for implementation of HF programme for 15 chronically homeless rough sleepers. Proposal has been accepted as worth doing and classified as something to be done in the future when European Funding for such projects becomes available.

Housing First in Gdańsk – social innovation in fighting homelessness

In 2014 a partnership of Pomeranian Forum in Aid of Getting out of Homelessness, Municipality of Gdańsk, University of Gdańsk and University of Social Sciences and Humanities filed a proposal titled “Housing First in Gdańsk – social innovation in fighting homelessness” in the competition for proposals for Social Innovations published by The National Centre for Research and Development.

The project has been ranked very high and was accepted for funding. However, The National Centre for Research and Development asked for some changes and there were negotiations going on. In December 2015, Centre representative told The Ius Medicinae Foundation that project was still in the appeal procedure. The result of the apeal procedure was expected to be negative.

Housing First – Evidence based Advocacy Project by the Ius Medicinae Foundation 2014-2016

The project offered evidenced-based advocacy for a change in attitudes towards support systems for severely excluded chronically homeless people who live ‘in the streets’ and do not use institutional social services. Evidence of the problem was collected through desk and empirical research based on data accumulated by service providers (Exploratory Qualitative Survey of Institutional Pathways of 17 Chronically Homeless People, Quantitative Survey of Dual Diagnosis among Male Users of Services for the Homeless in Warsaw and Analysis of Data Collected by the Ministry of Family Welfare and Social Policy during Homeless Count in 2013). Research results as well information on the Housing First Programe including translation of Sam Tsemberis’s Housing First Guidebook were disseminated in consultation seminars of stakeholders and conferences, websites, social media and online newsletters.

More on: https://www.czynajpierwmieszkanie.pl/en/

Interview with Project Coordinator: http://www.ngofund.org.pl/housing-first/

Habitat for Humanity proposal to the Municipality of Warsaw 2015

Habitat for Humanity Poland filed a proposal to the Municipality of Warsaw (alike CMSA proposal from 2013) for cooperation on pilot implementation of Housing First programme for five chronically homeless people with mental issues. An offer has been accepted by the Municipality of Warsaw however up to April 2016 nothing happened.