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Facts Facts Facts
This means that around the table we have:
• The agents responsible for guaranteeing social services and support to people experiencing homelessness. Both large municipalities with many people experiencing homelessness and municipalities in the provinces in which homelessness is rising.
• The social housing sector, which is a key player in providing affordable housing for all those experiencing homelessness and particularly vulnerable young people who face major challenges in entering the housing market.
• Private investors who want to help end homelessness through investment in housing and new innovative solutions.
• Civil society organisations that over decades have developed the skills required to support vulnerable people, offering tangible help as well as creating networks, relationships and communities characterised by equality.
• Philanthropic actors that wish to contribute to long-term cross-sectoral work and that help launch key analyses, technical and strategic sub-actions and pilot projects that support Housing First.
A total of 20 actors are currently partners in the alliance.
Work process
In practical terms the job can be summarised under four headings:
• To develop and test solutions that can show new ways to end homelessness.
• To mobilize support from politicians, professionals, frontrunners and the general public.
• To gain new knowledge about youth homelessness and how to end it.
• To mobilize resources to work towards the goal.
HTA organisational model with management roles Board
The Home for All Alliance. The Board has the overall responsibility for the development and strategy of the alliance.
Partners
Implement strategy, contribute resources, knowledge and supports action to end homelessness.
Secretariat
Unifying force supporting alliance partners' individual and collective work to end homelessness. Spearheads campaigns and public affairs in cooperation with Alliance partners.
The Board and partners meet regularly, facilitated by the secretariat. Because of their diversity, the partners act and contribute in different ways. For example, partners such as municipalities, housing agencies and civil society organisations contribute with their own various strengths reality and resources to different types of experimentation (also in conjunction with partners outside the Alliance). Philanthropic actors provide funding and/ or contribute to the creation of new knowledge. And all partners participate in influencing policy agendas, processes, etc. from their own different standpoints.
Important gains along the way
In the beginning, simply finding common ground on the Housing First strategy was a milestone. That the majority of a field of very diverse stakeholders succeeded in agreeing upon a common agenda that changed from the very explicit goal of finding 2,000 homes and social support for 2,000 young people experiencing homelessness to the broader objective of ending homelessness.
'The fact that we operated from such a solid knowledge base from the start, I think, was absolutely crucial to us being able to create the common ground and agree that Housing First is what we stand on – whether it's policy or projects. That's been essential to getting that common understanding'.
Anne Bergvith Sørensen, Programme Manager, The Home for All Alliance
Several partners also identify as a key success the close collegial relationships that have been built. This increases knowledge and understanding of each other's fields of interest and of the overall challenges of the field as a whole, which is an important and binding factor when it comes to agreeing on a common purpose.
Key challenges
• Collaboration becomes vulnerable when there is a turnover among the people who meet regularly in the alliance – this calls for a continuous focus on relationships within the Alliance and in the partner organisations.
• Personnel changes at the political level have forced us to focus on maintaining influence and reacting promptly to events both locally and nationally.
• Some of the civil society organisations working in the field of homelessness do not support Housing First, because they feel that the Housing First strategy has major implications for their own work in the field. Respect and consideration are needed when launching developments that require major changes on the part of other agents.
• Housing policy is crucial in the field of homelessness, but it is also challenging, because it affects completely different agendas and interests than those that dominate the social field. Herein lies both the strength and the challenge of being a cross-sectoral alliance.
• The partners in the alliance are different, for example in terms of the desire to act on the political level of the system. This has given rise to strategic discussions and has required understanding and accommodating the different premises and abilities of the partners to contribute to the common goal.
• Within the alliance a lot of energy has been spent on exploring how to include private housing interests in finding solutions to housing shortages, but we have not yet succeeded in finding viable models that suit the scale of our operations. In this area there still remain challenges to be addressed.
'Creating large-scale change requires extensive coordination across sectors. This means that staff turnover has a huge influence on maintaining a long-term perspective. Much can be lost or gained on that front – interests and areas of attention are fleeting, especially close to the political level where agendas shift rapidly'.
Erik Kaastrup-Hansen, Director of Social Affairs and Employment, City of Aarhus
Value for partners in the Alliance
• Extended network and strong relationships between the partners.
• Access to influence.
• Professional inspiration and knowledge sharing.
• Funding and resources for pilot projects important for knowledge generation.
• Mutual protection of interests in the field.
'For us, the value has been that what works and what doesn't work has been shared in a completely different way, and that there has been easier access to people with a say in what happens in the future. And there's been a lot of new networking with foundations, politicians, etc. And the fact that so many foundations and politicians have asked for this knowledge has actually also made us clearer about what we are good at ourselves and what we need more of. So, I think it's been win-win'.
Bo Heide-Jochimsen, Director, Project Outside
'In the beginning there was scepticism about whether it would work, and was it just selfpromotion? Is this just another foundation shouting that this needs to be done? I want to underline the fact that a lot of patience has been shown, and patience is also money. We from the municipalities live in a system where there isn't necessarily patience, so for them to stick with the long haul, that's hugely important'.
Erik Kaastrup-Hansen, Director, Social Affairs and Employment, Aarhus Municipality
Essential learning
The long-standing commitment of the Bikuben Foundation has given the alliance and the Secretariat a secure framework to work in. The secretariat has been able to act as a new and neutral unifying factor in the field of homelessness, which, with the Bikuben Foundation behind it, has been able to attract to the alliance different types of players who had not previously met together.
'Like any other field, that of homelessness is composed of a lot of people who have been working in it for a long time, and a lot of systems that have been built up over the years and don't always work as they should. The fact that someone took the initiative that brought us together, took a fresh look at the situation and had the patience to keep on saying certain things created unique opportunities for us to change some of the structures that haven't been working for a long time'.
Bo Heide-Jochimsen, Director, Project Outside
At the same time, it has provided an opportunity to delve into the social field and gather knowledge and data there, which is often not given much political priority. This has provided valuable insights.
'Compared, for example, to the health sector, there is very little funding for studies and research in the social sector. Funds for the long-term and for data development disappear time and again on the last night of political negotiations. So the funding to build something long-term is meagre. In my view, the foundations are one of the only ways to bring more funding into the area. I think Home for All is a good example of that'.
Ellen Klarskov Lauritzen, Director, National Board of Social Services
In retrospect, several stakeholders feel that for a relatively long period of time there was initially too much focus on specific projects. There is a perception that faster results might be achieved by insisting that the structural framework and the policy level also need to be involved from the start in order to embrace the complexity of the issue. Developing and testing new models is not the only way to do this.
Results
The November 2021 political agreement on a reform of homelessness policies set out to significantly reorient homelessness services towards expanding Housing First. The agreement was reached across the (then separate) Ministries of Social Affairs and Housing - never before has housing policy been part of the Danish homelessness strategy. The Home for All Alliance is credited with helping to bring about this agreement.
'The whole preparation of the homelessness agreement has been unique in terms of how much government departments and others have used us to an extent that has never been seen before, to make sure that this legislation will make sense. This is largely because NGOs have spoken with one voice. Home for All has a role in that, and it's had a big impact'.
Tom Pedersen Rønning, Housing Strategy Consultant, Odense Municipality
The latest national homelessness count (September 2022) shows that there are significantly fewer homeless young people. Among 18-29-year-olds, homelessness has fallen by 18%. In particular, local authorities that combine housing and effective social action in line with Housing First have brought significantly more young people out of homelessness. The biggest increase is in the municipality of Aarhus.
'We are seeing the results of working in a targeted way nationally and locally in a broad alliance with what we know works. This is particularly evident in Aarhus, where Housing First has been working for several years and has managed to eradicate a third of homeless cases'. Kira West, Director, Home for All Alliance
Climate challenges are some of the most pressing societal problems facing the world today. In 2015, UN member states signed the Paris Agreement, committing member countries to keep global temperature rise well below 2°C and work to limit it to 1.5°C. The EU also committed to reducing CO2 emissions by at least 40 % by 2030 compared to 1990.
In the wake of the Paris Agreement coming into effect in 2016, the international partnership C40 – a network of the world's 97 most climate-ambitious cities – and the consultancy firm Arup released the report, Deadline 2020. This report set a global standard for how cities and municipalities can contribute to achieving the Paris Agreement's goals. It also suggested that through the right climate action up to 40 % of the CO2 reductions that are needed to meet the Paris Agreement's most ambitious goals could come from the world's cities and municipalities.
In Denmark, there was no overall government ambition, requirement, or support for local action, which meant a risk of none, or very fragmented action in municipalities in terms of the 2030 target.
Start
In 2019, Realdania initiated DK2020, which was based on the C40 international standard for climate planning, the Climate Action Planning Framework (CAPF). The initiative was launched in collaboration with C40 Cities and CONCITO. The aim was to help municipalities initiate climate change with a level of ambition that meets the Paris Agreement targets.
20 municipalities were invited to join a pilot project and have committed to developing climate plans in compliance with the Paris Agreement.
In 2020, a partnership was established between Realdania, CONCITO, Denmark's green think tank, C40 Cities, Local Government Denmark and the Danish regions. The purpose of the partnership is to jointly contribute resources, knowledge, and tools to the work of developing and implementing climate action plans in all Danish municipalities in compliance with CAPF. The project aimed to offer municipalities a common framework, method, and direction for municipal climate work.
With a total of DKK 45 million, the initiative was expanded from the pilot project to an invitation for all municipalities to join:
• In 2020, 44 new municipalities were selected to participate.
• In 2021, 31 more municipalities joined.
• By 2022, a total of 95 of the country's municipalities will have joined. The last municipalities will complete the process in 2023.
• The City of Copenhagen is part of the international C40 network. In this context, Copenhagen has developed a Climate Action Plan which is also compatible with the Paris Agreement.
'We are required by the state to make all sorts of plans about waste, for example, but we are not required to make plans about the climate, so it's great that when a foundation comes along and gets municipalities to make climate plans. Even if they make sure that we get started working on it, it is still not a requirement that municipalities make climate plans, for example, to reduce CO2. It is a scandal that it is not a state requirement that municipalities make climate plans.'
Thorbjørn Sørensen, Climate Director, Middelfart Municipality
95 municipalities in DK2020
Duration of the initiative
2020-2023
Partners
Realdania, KL, Regions and CONCITO
Objective
All of the country's municipalities are drawing up an ambitious climate action plan to make them climate neutral by 2050.
Access
The municipalities are working towards the common overarching goal of climate neutrality and will be given access to shared professional knowledge and sparring, data bases and shared communication.
Examples of actions
Development and adaptation of an international framework of action for the development of climate plans in a Danish context.
