Berlin, 10.09.2025 – A total of 55,656 homeless people live in Berlin as of 31.01.2024, according to the Homelessness Report*.
In order to meet this challenge effectively, five Berlin organizations have joined forces to form the Housing First Network Berlin: Sozialdienst katholischer Frauen e.V. Berlin, Schwulenberatung Berlin gGmbH, Phinove e.V., LA VIDA gGmbH and My Way Soziale Dienste gGmbH. The aim is to jointly acquire housing, strengthen cooperation with the Berlin administration and landlords, and carry out joint public relations work in order to offer homeless people long-term prospects with the tried-and-tested Housing First approach. The projects are financed by the Berlin Senate Department for Social Affairs.
Housing First is a concept that first provides homeless people with a permanent home with their own tenancy agreement and offers social work support to help them overcome their problems. This model has proven to be very successful with a residential stability of over 90 %. In addition, Housing First is economically much more efficient than conventional emergency accommodation and creates sustainable prospects.
The National Action Plan against Homelessness 2024 sets the goal of providing suitable housing for every homeless person or person at risk of homelessness by 2030. The Housing First Network Berlin wants to make a central contribution to this.
Why a network?
Homelessness assistance faces major challenges: Access to affordable housing is particularly difficult because, in addition to the existing housing shortage, many landlords have reservations about homeless people.
A strong network enables:
– More effective real estate acquisition and more efficient use of existing housing contingents
– Greater public awareness through joint advertising campaigns, press work and political influence to improve the framework conditions.
Existential social needs are not negotiable
Housing policy must finally create the right incentives to provide more housing for homeless people.
The members of the network are unanimous: we firmly believe that we will achieve our goals better if we act united and on behalf of all homeless people, regardless of their origin, gender and problems, instead of acting as lone fighters for specific groups. To do this, however, we need political support and effective cooperation with the real estate industry and Berlin’s administrative authorities.
