HR4Homelessness - Integrating Harm Reduction in Homeless Services

This group consists of representatives of the local government, representatives of the justice system and the police, and the managers of housing, healthcare and social benefit services. [...] In order to gain a better understanding of the social relief program, and aware of the impossibility, within the scope of this report, to account accurately for all of the Dutch municipalities, the model of Amsterdam will be offered as an example. [...] The focus of this supervision lies on the role of the client as a tenant and the condition in which the home is maintained. [...] Measuring the developments of clients through the ZRM (Self-sufficiency Matrix), although the scores in most areas of life fluctuated somewhat in the intervention period, the scores at the end are higher in all areas than at the start. [...] This shift in balance between the social and the penal and the link between insecurity and the ‘criminalization of poverty`, reduces the opportunities available to people experiencing homeless and the space for potential solutions to their problems, and contributes to the degradation of homeless policies.