Tedx talk on Housing First by Coralie Buxant
The most vulnerable homeless people (mental health/drug addiction) find it difficult to complete the successive stages of the traditional integration process.
Housing First offers an alternative: immediate and unconditional access to housing, straight from the streets, with intensive, tailored multidisciplinary support. The Housing First Belgium social innovation experiment has demonstrated its effectiveness and invites us to think differently about policies to combat homelessness.
Coralie Buxant, PhD in psychology, teaches social psychology at UCL, the University of Namur, ICHEC-Brussels Management School and IHECS. She initiated the Housing First Belgium experiment – an operational objective of the Second Federal Plan to Combat Poverty – with public and private social action operators in eight major Belgian cities (via a subsidy from the National Lottery). The aim was to test the efficiency of a new public policy (immediate reintegration through housing for vulnerable homeless people) in comparison with the current service offering. She was responsible for its scientific and strategic coordination. For a while she coordinated Housing First Belgium – LAB, a support structure for the development of Housing First practices, within the Public Service for Programming – Social Integration.
Watch the recording here. (in French)