The Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights, Nicolas Schmit, told MEPs in the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL) on Thursday 13 January that the European Commission’s top priority in the fight against homelessness was to develop a quality database on the Platform on Combatting Homelessness.
You have to understand a phenomenon before you can act and provide a policy response, he explained. For example, the institution will implement the ‘point-in-time count’ pilot project to count the number of people currently homeless. Within Eurostat, similar work is underway to determine the number of people in the country who have been homeless at some point in the past. The first results are expected in 2024, he said.
In collaboration with the Social Protection Committee, the Commission will develop a proposal for a common framework for monitoring homelessness, including how to define and measure it. This will be done in 2022 and 2023, Mr Schmit clarified.
In addition, the Commission will develop a toolkit for designing effective homelessness strategies, based on cutting-edge research to be launched this year.
In the same year, the Commission intends to organise mutual learning events to identify good practices at local level. In this respect, the Commissioner stressed the importance of supporting social innovations in the framework of the European Union Programme for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI).
Mr Schmit added that one of the platform’s main tasks is to better disaggregate information on European funds, citing the European Regional Development Fund, but also the European Social Fund plus.
Responding to MEPs, the Commissioner said that he would “create a special instrument through InvestEU to finance the modalities and instruments that can promote the development of housing and, above all, combat homelessness”.
The European institutions, Member States and civil society launched the European Platform on Combatting Homelessness in June 2021, in the context of the Action Plan on the European Pillar of Social Rights (see EUROPE 12745/23). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)