Almost 900 000 people experience street homelessness or stay in a shelter on any given night in the EU. Homelessness has more than doubled in the last 15 years, and so the EESC calls on the Member States and the EU to take action.

The EESC is calling for a comprehensive EU homelessness strategy and for effective national homelessness policies to be enacted swiftly in a bid to substantially reduce homelessness, one of the most extreme forms of social exclusion, by 2030.

"We call for an EU homelessness strategy that fully integrates the European Platform on Combating Homelessness (EPOCH) and enables national homelessness policies to be included in the European Semester," said Maria del Carmen Barrera Chamorro, rapporteur for the EESC opinion on the EU framework for national homeless strategies.

The strategy must be supported by a Council Recommendation and the EESC calls on the new Belgian presidency of the Council of the EU to start work on it. It also asks the Commission to lose no time in drawing up a proposal for a new multiannual work programme which would continue into and cover its entire next mandate.

"The EESC wants homelessness to remain a social policy priority for the EU in the run-up to the European elections and beyond. We need a strategic shift in focus from managing homelessness to actually ending it by 2030," said Ákos Topolánszky, co-rapporteur for the opinion.

The EESC suggested actively promoting the "Housing First" principle to address chronic homelessness. Under this principle, housing is not just a shelter: it is also a tool for reintegration. It provides long-term housing solutions and is not dependant on conditions such as the need to demonstrate personal development or to accept support.

The housing-led approach has already been endorsed in the Lisbon Declaration, which was signed by all 27 EU Member States, the European institutions and several European NGOs in 2021. The Declaration is the political basis for EPOCH, and its signatories undertook to cooperate on homelessness at EU level and to work towards ending homelessness by 2030. However, the EESC notes in the opinion, despite political efforts, not enough is being done to address homelessness at either European or national level.

Over the last 20 years, Finland is the only country that has managed to reduce homelessness consistently. (ll)