Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, 27 March 2025
Speaking at this event on Addressing homelessness in towns and cities, the Special Rapporteur confirmed the urgency of the problem of homelessness, highlighting a series of aggravating factors such as income inequalities, the lack of sufficient indexation of wages, social benefits in the context of rising rents and a trend towards the individualisation of households. He denounced the criminalisation of homelessness and the practices that result from it as a violation of human rights. By urging local and regional authorities to adopt the Housing First strategy, which consists of providing people with decent housing before dealing with other problems such as employment, drug addiction, alcoholism, etc., he called on them to invest in the construction of social housing.