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Addressing homelessness to achieve equitable urban futures

Homelessness is the most extreme form of poverty and social exclusion, and it exists in every country world-wide. This interactive event will feature key successes and barriers to addressing homelessness, drawn from the Institute of Global Homelessness' Vanguard Cities Program. Attendees will leave the session with specific ideas on how policymakers and practitioners from all sectors can take action to increase the access of all to the right to housing and the right to the city. Ample time for questions and answers, interventions, and dialogue will conclude the session.

Lydia Stazen

Moderator

date June 28, 2022 | 17:30 - 19:00
place
ICC: Voices from Cities Room A
organization
Institute of Global Homelessness
country
United States of America
language
Polish, Spanish, English, French + CART
theme
Equitable urban futures
Reference: 
VC-A 7

Summary

Homelessness is the most extreme form of poverty and social exclusion, and it exists in every country world-wide. Local, national, and international institutional frameworks, including the Sustainable Development Goals, often do not specifically address the issue of homelessness and continue to leave the most vulnerable further and further behind. Global crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine show us the importance of both housing infrastructure and comprehensive support services like access to healthcare and trauma-informed care.

The Institute of Global Homelessness (IGH) and UN-Habitat are collaborating to bring evidence-based best practice and policy to the forefront of the international conversation around sustainable and equitable cities. This interactive event will feature key successes and barriers to addressing homelessness, drawn from IGH’s first cohort of thirteen Vanguard Cities. Attendees will hear perspectives from the Vanguard Cities themselves, as well as research findings from the Ending Street Homelessness in Vanguard Cities across the Globe: An International Comparative Study. IGH engaged an independent, third party research team to conduct the international comparative study to identify common learnings across all thirteen different contexts and the study’s final report was published in March 2022. Attendees will leave the session with specific ideas on how policymakers and practitioners from all sectors can take action to increase the access of all to the right to housing and the right to the city.

IGH’s first global cohort of Vanguard Cities ran from 2017-2022. Each cohort city set specific, local goals on homelessness and progressed towards those goals while learning from each other about what worked, what didn’t, and what can be done about homelessness going forward. For the Vanguard Cities, IGH partnered with a diverse range of stakeholders in each city including city, state, and national governments, homeless organizations, collective impact groups, and other civil society associations. The Vanguard Cities were located across all six continents, including one city in Africa, one in Asia, two in Australia, four in Europe, three in North America, and two in South America.

We will share key learnings from the cities, including enablers to progress as well as common barriers to progress. Contextual variables such as political will, financial resources, available housing supply, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will also be highlighted. IGH and UN-Habitat will share about our collaborative effort to take these learnings and help more local and national stakeholders address homelessness through data collection, policy frameworks, and the implementation of evidence-based best practices.

Ample time for questions and answers, interventions, and dialogue will conclude the session.

Objectives

This session’s key objectives are to:

  • Frame homelessness as an extreme form of poverty and social exclusion that can be ended through smart policy and practice
  • Establish addressing homelessness as a critical pillar of achieving equitable cities, the right to adequate housing, and the right to the city
  • Share key successes and barriers to addressing homelessness at the local level from the Institute of Global Homelessness’ (IGH) first cohort of thirteen Vanguard Cities, particularly highlighting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
  • Share perspectives on homelessness from researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and people with the lived experience of homelessness through a diverse panel of presenters
  • Provide attendees with specific policy-and-practice ideas that can be adapted and implemented in any context, as well as next steps for any attendee interested in joining the global movement to end homelessness 
  • Provide information on IGH and UN-Habitat’s collaborative effort to build local and national capacity to address homelessness
  • Facilitate robust dialogue between panelists and attendees through question and answers and interventions from the floor

Session speakers

Speaker
Role
Organization
Country
Dr. Shipra Narang Suri
Chief, Urban Practices Branch
UN-Habitat
Ms. Karinna Soto
Ministerio de Desarrollo Social y Familia de Chile
Ms. Rajani Srikakulam
Consultant
Impact India Consortium
Ms. Suzanne Fitzpatrick
Researcher
Heriot-Watt University
Lydia Stazen
Executive Director
Institute of Global Homelessness
Julia Wagner
Program Manager
Institute of Global Homelessness