The solution is actually there (retro 1/12)

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Kevin Michel's story is first and foremost his own personal one. And yet it is also exemplary. At the end of a chain of events and decisions, he ends up on the street. From there, the path to addiction is often not far. There are many such life accidents, also in Luxembourg. If you were to ask drug addicts about their lives, they would tell countless stories about broken families, suffering, escape, violence or mental illness. Or it could be an addiction that has gotten out of control – alcohol, gambling, cocaine or something else – and is taking its toll on a reasonably regular life with a family, a job and an apartment. The result is usually the same: a daily vicious cycle of acquisitive crime, consumption and the search for a place to stay. The hunt for intoxication increasingly aggravates their own situation, psychologically and physically. Prison stays are not uncommon.

Kevin Michels was able to break this vicious circle. His story shows that "Housing First", the concept of a low-threshold housing solution, works. Having a safe place to retreat to, a home, opens up new perspectives for improving one's own situation as well as social integration.

But what Finland has already tried out extremely successfully – the country has massively reduced its homeless figures – is still very much open to expansion in Luxembourg. This is hardly due to the non-profit associations that are active in this field – and in the case of jugend- an drogenhëllef have been for a long time. Rather, it is due to politics, which has known about the concept for a long time, but lacks the will to implement it. As Belgian guest speaker Caroline Buxant said at a conference on Housing First in October: The thinking behind Housing First, she said, is that as a society we simply no longer accept that someone is living on the streets. If you want to pursue this goal consistently, you can't be satisfied with emergency shelters and the like, managing the problem. But Luxembourg is still a long way from achieving this. Not only does an increasingly tight situation on the housing market raise the question of whether the government's housing policy approaches will result in housing that is available quickly and in sufficient quantities. It is the problem par excellence, as many Journal articles this year have shown.

Also, the need for and inventory of Housing First housing is still unmapped at the national level. But how do you expect to combat a problem about which you know nothing? True, the evaluation of the national action plan against homelessness, little known by social actors by the way, is underway and a study on homelessness in Luxembourg is planned. But all this will again take a lot of time.

Following up on topics like this, taking time to research and go on site, that's what has characterized this year at the Journal. The task for the coming year is to keep at it.