Throughout Europe there is a deeply felt problem regarding the right to housing that affects an ever-increasing number of citizens. In particular, in recent years, due to the increase in management costs, many families or single people, despite having a job, struggle to maintain their home or to pay the rent. This and more were discussed yesterday in Pula, precisely at the Town Hall, where the participants in the meeting presented to each other their models of intervention in the field of policies to combat serious marginalization based on the placement of homeless people in independent apartments, and not only, as explained by the representatives of the City of Pula and those of the organization responsible for the meeting: the Association for the fight against poverty – AjA.
The honor and burden of officially declaring the technical meeting open fell to the city councilor for Social Policies, Youth and Sport, Ivana Sokolov, who greeted those present – including Louise Winterburn, deputy chief executive of World Habitat, an international charity, the heads of important third sector organizations and some Hungarian, Romanian, Slovakian and Serbian institutions – and recalled that, by studying the Lisbon model, copying it and adapting it to local needs, Pula was the first city in Croatia to launch its Housing First program, a form of support from the city administration and the entire local community to the most vulnerable subjects. During the meeting, it was recalled that the goal of the initiative is to place homeless people in public housing or rented at the expense of local authorities. As previously mentioned, Housing First is much more than this. “Above all because it also aims to place people with mental health problems or in situations of chronic socio-housing hardship in apartments,” explained Ivana Sokolov, adding that another purpose of the project is to promote paths of well-being and social integration. “Unfortunately, anyone, for one reason or another, could end up without a home. Our task is to prevent this from happening,” the councilor commented, recalling that the City of Pula, in collaboration with the various associations present in the area, started with just one apartment and today has five homes designated for Housing First. The floor was then given to the guests, who one by one presented the solutions adopted in their respective cities of residence. During the meeting, World Habitat was also presented, whose projects and initiatives in favor of people in difficulty are exported all over the world. In addition to an opportunity to discuss and exchange information and knowledge, yesterday’s meeting was an excellent opportunity to lay the foundations for future collaboration between the participating associations.
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