The EU Rules & Actions
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Beyond sleeping rough, homelessness may include situations of living in temporary, insecure or poor-quality housing. Typical causes of homelessness are:

• unemployment and poverty
• migration
• ageing
• health problems
• relationship breakdowns
• lack of affordable housing for rent and for sale
• inadequate support for people leaving care facilities, hospitals, prisons or other public institutions.

​Homeless people may face reduced life expectancy, health problems, discrimination, isolation and barriers to access to basic public services and benefits.

Challenges for the EU include:
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• Homelessness levels have risen in most parts of Europe during the last decade. The financial crisis, dating back to 2008-2009, seems to have aggravated the situation.
• The profile of the homeless population has been changing and now includes more young people and children, migrants, Roma and other disadvantaged minorities, women and families are increasingly at-risk of homelessness.
• Lack of comprehensive data which would allow for monitoring homelessness in the EU.
• High social cost of not tackling homelessness, particularly regarding the health and justice services use.

European Platform on Combatting Homelessness

In June 2021, the EU 27 launched the European Platform on Combatting Homelessness. This Platform is dealing with huge dialogue, mutual learning, monitoring and cooperation among all actors that aim to fight homelessness.

The Platform launched in 2021 is a process to establish a common understanding and commitment to ensure concrete progress in Member States in the fight against homelessness. It offers an opportunity to engage and work with local actors, including cities and service providers. This enables all actors to better exchange their knowledge and practices, and identify efficient and innovative approaches, to make progress on eradicating homelessness.

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Political objectives of EU:

• no one sleeps rough for lack of accessible, safe and appropriate emergency accommodation;
• no one lives in emergency or transitional accommodation longer than is required for successful move-on to a permanent housing solution;
• no one is discharged from any institution (e.g. prison, hospital, care facility) without an offer of appropriate housing;
• evictions should be prevented whenever possible and no one is evicted without assistance for an appropriate housing solution, when needed;
• no one is discriminated due to their homelessness status.

EU Funds and other supports combatting homelessness

​The European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) is the EU's main funding instrument for investing in people, worth €99.3 billion (2021 prices) for 2021-2027. All EU Member States will invest at least 25% of their ESF+ resources in social inclusion and at least 3% to address material deprivation. Countries where children's risk of poverty or social exclusion is above the EU average should use at least 5% of their ESF+ resources to tackle this issue.

InvestEU also offers opportunities to support investment in social infrastructure, including social housing.

Ending Homelessness Award 2021

During the high-level conference in 2021 in Lisbon on combatting homelessness, three projects from EU Member States, which have been supported by the European Social Fund (ESF) and the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD), have received the Ending Homelessness Award 2021. In the third edition of the Ending Homelessness Awards, the goal was to raise awareness about the opportunities in the new Multiannual Financial Framework to tackle homelessness effectively. The ‘Housing First' project for the Moravian-Silesian Region in Czechia involving a wide range of services and activities is the Gold Prize winner. The Portuguese project ‘É Uma Mesa' that promotes the social integration of homeless people by providing them training, job referrals and employment is the Silver Prize winner and Italy won the Bronze Prize with ‘Housing First' Trieste project.
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