The Council of Ministers today approved the National Strategy for the Inclusion of People Experiencing Homelessness 2025-2030, which focuses on prevention and creates an alert system for risk situations, the government announced today.
“The new strategy introduces a set of measures, with a focus on prevention and the creation of an integrated warning system for risk situations,” reads today’s Council of Ministers communiqué, around seven hours after the meeting’s briefing.
According to the same press release, the strategy includes “personalized intervention with case managers at local level” and an increase in ‘housing first’ solutions and shared apartments.
The ‘housing first’ project began in the United States around 20 years ago and was introduced in Portugal in 2009. 90% of the people taken in by the initiative have not returned to homelessness.
In this project, people are integrated into housing that tends to be individual and are monitored by technicians who teach them how to manage a home with a view to their social integration.
Specialized intervention with especially vulnerable groups and the strengthening of local support networks for people at risk or experiencing homelessness are other measures included in the strategy approved today.
At the end of today’s Council of Ministers meeting, which was attended by the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, António Costa, had already announced the approval of the resolution, stressing that it was an issue that the Head of State “has particularly cherished”.
The head of government explained that this was “the only piece of legislation” that the outgoing executive was “really competent to approve”.
Also speaking to journalists at the end of the meeting, the President of the Republic indicated that this was “the only point” on which he had spoken to the government.
“Because it was irresistible for me, on the subject of homelessness strategy, not to speak out,” he said.
The previous National Strategy for the Integration of People Experiencing Homelessness, which was due to expire at the end of 2023, was extended on December 21 until the end of 2024.
More than 10,700 people were homeless in 2022, according to the most recent official data, in which for the first time a survey was carried out in all the municipalities of mainland Portugal.
In the last three years, according to the coordinator of the National Strategy for the Integration of Homeless People, around 2,500 people have stopped living in this condition.
