"For me, Housing First is about dignity. By offering people back a home that is really theirs, you give them so much more: freedom and autonomy, life chances, future, happiness"

Melanie’s working life focus on people in need, and especially on the field of homelessness. She studied social work, then completed a bachelor’s degree in health care management and a study around professional coaching and leadership. She’s currently focusing on education around public affairs after having started as a social worker in a homelessness service and becoming a Housing First manager for adults and for youth. Today, Melanie works for LIMOR on scaling up, further developing, and promoting Housing First in the Northern and Western part of The Netherlands. She’s also training groups on Housing First. Melanie was one of the co-initiators of Housing First Netherland and is now its president.

Juha has been working for 10 years in the field of homelessness. He started as a frontline support worker in 2010 for the Finnish Youth housing association services (NALPA) before becoming Housing First service manager and then CEO of NALPA. He joined Y-Säätiö in 2018 as coordinator for the National Housing First Development Network and became the Lead Coordinator in 2020 and is currently head of international affairs at Y-Säätiö. As part of his role at the Network, Juha organises training courses at national level, and is working on developing the Housing First model together with dozens of NGO’s and cities.