Housing First Berlin (HFB) is a philanthropic-led program aimed to end and prevent homelessness in the German capital. HFB is led by Neue Chance (New Chance), a not-for-profit organisation providing social and youth services and Berliner Stadtmission (Berlin City Mission), a faith-based organisation committed to supporting disadvantaged individuals and families. The HFB model was developed in collaboration with FEANTSA (European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homelessness) and GISS (Society for Innovative Social Research and Social Planning).
The core aims of HFB is to enable housing to end homelessness, supporting people with high needs to lead a decent and self-determined life lead as well regaining or mobilising individual empowerment.
To deliver on these aims, the HFB model provides access topermanent, supportive housing for people with high and complex needs experiencing chronic homelessness. Flexible wrap-around support is provided by a multi-professional team of social workers, caregivers, and a range of healthcare professionals.
Built form
Since launching in 2018, HFB has secured 35 one-bedroom apartments and 5 two-bedroom apartments. As of 2021, 70 per cent of Housing First Berlin dwellings have been provided through the public housing system and 30 per cent from private rental landlords. The 40 self-contained apartments are scattered throughout the twelve districts of the German capital.
For us, the idea of Housing First is to provide scattered housing and not congregate living quarters. And so, we aim to have no more than two Housing First Berlin flats in one residential building (Karen Holzinger, co-founder of Housing First Berlin, 2021).
Financial details
Housing First Berlin does not build or purchase housing. Instead, the project model involves the State Government committing a small proportion of the existing, albeit constrained, public housing supply to the program. Additional homes have been acquired from philanthropic private landlords whereby rents are set at a small proportion of the HFB tenant’s income. Rental income is typically derived from government income or disability assistance.
Funding required to operate HFB has been secured through time-limited State Government grants and generous donations from Berliner Stadtmission. Neue Chance is responsible for program expansion, recruiting private landlords, generating new funding through grants and donations and day-to-day bookkeeping.
Property and tenancy management
Under this model, properties remain owned by either the state government or private housing providers. Unlike head-leasing, tenancy leases are established between the housing provider and tenant directly, while Berliner Stadtmission/Neue Chance mediate all landlord-to-tenant communication.
The target group of the Housing First Berlin program include adults of any gender identity and any national, ethnic, religious and cultural background experiencing chronic homelessness. Clients are referred to Housing First Berlin through a network of local homelessness outreach services. Berliner Stadmission takes on the role of allocating housing following a needs-based prioritisation system. A stringent effort is made to house clients in a neighbourhood of their choosing, enabling clients to maintain existing social connections and linkages with familiar support resources.
Clients can remain in the HFB program for as long as they want or need. The program also includes a rapid re-housing component if the tenant is required, or chooses, to vacate the initial dwelling allocated to them. Since launching in 2012, 85 per cent of clients have moved into housing of their choosing within three months.
Following the Housing First principles, the program provides housing without any preconditions regarding sobriety or treatment services. However, a component of the housing program includes a low-threshold cooperation agreement whereby clients must be willing to have regular contact with a case manager.
The lead organisations are in the process of expanding the HFB program, with plans to acquire an additional 160 homes by 2022.
Further information
For further information about Housing First Berlin, please visit: https://housingfirstberlin.de/
Additional resources for this profile
Key quote from interview:
Housing First offers a very good chance to end or reduce homelessness. But it’s very important to take the rules and commitments of Housing First very seriously… There are quite a few organisations call what they do Housing First, but it’s not Housing First. And that is very weakening for this label (Karen Holzinger, co-founder of Housing First Berlin)
‘t’s important to stress the point that the foundation of Housing First is that you agree that housing is a human right — a basic human right. And if it’s a basic human right, it’s not good to argue about the costs because then it does not matter how much it costs. Housing should be a human right for everybody’(Karen Holzinger, co-founder of Housing First Berlin)
