“Housing first”
The “Housing First” policy initiated in France in 2018 invites us to rethink the principles and methods of accompaniment towards and in housing. Based in part on the “Un chez-soi d’abord” experiment, which has now been made sustainable, “Housing First” calls into question a support model based on social emergency. The State invites and encourages local authorities (cities, municipalities, departments) to cooperate with associations to implement this policy. In this way, “Housing First” suggest grounding support towards and in housing on a presumption of equality of each person’s capacity to live in order to fight against inequalities in the process of accessing to housing and against homelessness. Our proposal is based on a survey, on the responsibility and the coordination of the “Housing First” university diploma, and on the enrolment in a network of “Housing First” policies at national and international level. This presupposition of equality of capacities to live invites us in any case to be more interested in the subjectivity of the individual, in the subject, which accompaniments oriented towards recovery seem to favour. However, points of vigilance must be maintained in order not to accentuate other forms of inequality.