Presentation given by Julia Wygnańska, Polska Strona Bezdomności i Wykluczeniu mieszkaniowym, Poland at a FEANTSA Research Conference on "Understanding Homelessness and Housing Exclusion in the New European Context", Budapest, Hungary, 2010

1. Insert your logo here
Attitudes to data collection on
homelessness in Warsaw, PL
Julia Wygnańska
Polska Strona Bezdomności i Wykluczeniu
mieszkaniowym www.bezdomnosc.edu.pl
European Research Conference, Budapest, 17th September 2010
UNDERSTANDING HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING EXCLUSION IN THE
ENHR
NEW EUROPEAN CONTEXT

2. Plan of the presentation
 Backgound on Warsaw (municipality, homelessness,
relationship ngo – local government)
 Background on national data collection
 Current status of data collection in Warsaw
 Recent developments and attitudes of service providers
 Pilot study on aggregation of data from service users
registers
 Conclusions
European Research Conference, Budapest, 17th September 2010
UNDERSTANDING HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING EXCLUSION IN ENHR
THE NEW EUROPEAN CONTEXT

3. Warsaw - background
Warsaw, The capital of Poland:
 area of 517 km²
 1,7mln inhabitants
 many inhabitants registered for permanent stay in other gminas
Budget 2009:
 overall city income 2,5b €
 social welfare and health care 188m € = 7,9% of general spendings)
 homelessness 2m € av. subsidy for one sleeping place 2.42€
Almost 13,5k registered ngos – some are national headquarters;
 1756 active in overcoming difficult living situations, supportive
activities
 50 services for the homeless: nightshelters, shelters, specialist
shelters; soupkitchens, storehouses, medical point and advisory
bodies. All run by about 10 ngos (incl. church based organizations).
European Research Conference, Budapest, 17th September 2010
UNDERSTANDING HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING EXCLUSION IN ENHR
THE NEW EUROPEAN CONTEXT

4. Homeless population – background
 Each Monday on avarage 2300 people in homeless
institutions funded by local government (25 of 40)
 mostly men, 30-50 years old
 Uncounted quantity living in public spaces and gardening
allotments
 no data on numbers, many alcoholics (banned in shelters),
occupation – trash collection
 Presumed substantial proportion of users migrating from
the country
 Gap – lack of services for phisically disabled and of poor
health (requiring post-hospital care), lack of services for
mentally challenged.
European Research Conference, Budapest, 17th September 2010
UNDERSTANDING HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING EXCLUSION IN ENHR
THE NEW EUROPEAN CONTEXT

5. Ngos and local gov’t – moods
 Independent homeless ngos:
 Anti-government tradition still persisting in attitudes of
many activists (opposing government much easier
then cooperating and building partnership)
 Working in charitable effort rather then fulfilling duties
contracted out by the local government.
 Local government:
 Feeling comfortable with ngos doing all the job
 Complaining on shortcomings but providing too little
effort and money for effective solutions
European Research Conference, Budapest, 17th September 2010
UNDERSTANDING HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING EXCLUSION IN ENHR
THE NEW EUROPEAN CONTEXT

6. Ngos and local gov’t – dialogue structure
 Local government plenipotentiary for ngos and Annual
Programme of Cooperation with Ngos.
 Dialogue Forum (since 2003)
 Consultative character and competencies
 Consisting of thematic dialog commissions formed by ngo
representatives and local gov’t representative for the theme
 Ngo participate on voluntary basis
 Homelessness Commission based on Homelessness
Council established in 1991
 Meetings once a month
 About 30 frequent participants, average presence per meeting =
20 people.
 Since January 2010 minutes are taken and published
European Research Conference, Budapest, 17th September 2010
UNDERSTANDING HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING EXCLUSION IN ENHR
THE NEW EUROPEAN CONTEXT

7. (ambivalent) Role of the Council
 ... in effective management of the problem of
homelessness.
 On one hand it’s long tradition in fostering cooperation
between l.g. and ngos is unique
 It builds important networks between street level
workers eg. shelter managers, social workers
 On the other due to bi-sectoral construction of the
Dialog Forum it keeps substantial number of key
stakeholders outside eg. local welfare centres, local
police, hospital social workers,
 Creates the feeling of omnipotent role of ngos in
solving homelessness.
European Research Conference, Budapest, 17th September 2010
UNDERSTANDING HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING EXCLUSION IN ENHR
THE NEW EUROPEAN CONTEXT

8. National data collection
 Regular headcount survey in Pomerania Voivodship
 Few Rough Sleeper Counts (Cracow, Bialystok)
 Census 2011 – headcount methodology planned and already tested
 Ngos promoting definition of a „homeless person” as an agreed and
recommended for national census
 (abandoned) Project of the National Strategy on Homelessness
promoting measuring homelessness with „Pomeranian
methodology”
 National data – only administrative on welfare benefits for people in
difficult living situation called homelessness and on beneficiaries of
national grant programme for ngos.
 Some national networks implementing electronic client registers e.g.
MONAR, TPBA to track movement of clients within the organization
European Research Conference, Budapest, 17th September 2010
UNDERSTANDING HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING EXCLUSION IN ENHR
THE NEW EUROPEAN CONTEXT

9. Data collection in Warsaw
 Quarterly reports from ngos that have contracts with
local government on point in time stock of their
shelters/institutions:
 (per shelter) overall number, sex, age, length of
homelessness, adress of last registration for permanent
stay
 gaps/problems: (1) only marginal data (2) only from shelters
contracted by local government
 Monday reports (email or phone call)
 number of available/free spaces among overal stock contracted
out by the local government.
 gaps: (1) shelters with contracts provide more spaces then
contracted by the l.g. (2) there are organizations which provide
spaces without any contract with l.g.
European Research Conference, Budapest, 17th September 2010
UNDERSTANDING HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING EXCLUSION IN ENHR
THE NEW EUROPEAN CONTEXT

10. Data collection – developments
 On February 2010 meeting of the Homelessness
Commission municipal officer mentioned that debate on
interactive database on users of homeless services
should began.
 major goal – to track the service use of the clients of multiple
shelters e.g. checking the history of using Warsaw services at
registration for the service
 Polarized attitudes and furious comments on both sides
 Pilot study for measuring homelessness through
aggregation of data from ngo service users registers
 major goal - testing methodology
 major challenges: (1) withdrowing data protected by the Law on
Personal Data Protection (names, dates of birth, addresses for
permanent registration); (2) condition of client registers (mostly
in paper)
European Research Conference, Budapest, 17th September 2010
UNDERSTANDING HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING EXCLUSION IN ENHR
THE NEW EUROPEAN CONTEXT

11. Attitudes to data collection
 Attitudes revealed during meetings of the Homelessness Commission (based on the
minutes and official statements issued by some participants/ngos):
 (Negative:)
 Ngos exist to support vulnerable people in need and collecting data contradicts that goal as
bureaucracy takes time necessary for direct support.
 Interavctive data base makes shelters to become storages and inhabitatns to become
pricable commodities/products.
 Availability of tracing service use in a past by the person asking for support may be easily
used as a justification of denying support.
 Ngo social workers are able to gain all data they need in direct interview/contact with the
client. They do not need to check it up in a data base.
 Gathering data is first step to processing it what would for sure break the regulations of the
Law on Personal Data Protection.
 (Positive:)
 Data is collected anyway, and in most cases in paper so why not doing it in electronic
version since it saves time.
 Easy access to relevant software
 Not mentioned:
 Need to verify easily constructed theses regarding Warsaw homeless population (number,
prevalence of homelessness by choice, formal residence other then Warsaw, (mis)using
homeless shelters as worker’s hostels) – stakeholders (including local government) believe
they know anyway.
European Research Conference, Budapest, 17th September 2010
UNDERSTANDING HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING EXCLUSION IN ENHR
THE NEW EUROPEAN CONTEXT

12. Developments
 Further meetings proved that:
 Participants did not understand basic terms regarding data collection
(interactive database, internal database, sharing data, revealing data,
data protection, Law on Personal Data Protection, etc.)...
 Apart from the need to protect their clients ngos felt the need to protect
their institutions from possible judgements e.g. „If people see that a
person comes back to our shelter many times someone would claim that
the shelter is not effective in supporting people out of homelessness”.
Data gathering and analysis would not help us at all.
 The debate on interactive data base was abandoned however it
seems that local government is still considering its establishment as
a condition for municipal contracts for homeless services.
 Meanwhile members of the Commission were introduced with the
idea of aggregation of data from their client record systems.
 The pilot study is currently implemented in Wola district of Warsaw by
The Unit for Social Innovation and Research – Shipyard. It is founded by
the Mazowia Voivodship Office.
European Research Conference, Budapest, 17th September 2010
UNDERSTANDING HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING EXCLUSION IN ENHR
THE NEW EUROPEAN CONTEXT

13. Pilot study
 July – December 2010, budget 7,5k€ (sic!)
 Participants:
 All (but one) services from the district (9) including full range of services
present in the town.
 Members and no-members of the Council and organizations paid and
not paid for by the local gov’t.
 Local welfare centre, local social policy department
 Attitudes:
 (positive)
 All registers made available to researchers including personal
identification data
 Procedure does not contradict regulations on personal data collection
 Local government interested in methodology, as well as remaining ngos
providing services for the homeless
 (negative)
 Results may not pay for amount of work required to collect the data
European Research Conference, Budapest, 17th September 2010
UNDERSTANDING HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING EXCLUSION IN ENHR
THE NEW EUROPEAN CONTEXT

14. Pilot study – planned results
 Creating positive attitudes to data collection on
homelessness among Warsaw service providers.
 Improving data collection systems used by Warsaw
service providers (supporting transition from paper
regiters to electronic databases).
 Publishing step by step guidebook for service providers.
 Recommendations for National Strategy on
Homelessness regarding data collection on national
level.
 Partial description of homeless population in Warsaw.
European Research Conference, Budapest, 17th September 2010
UNDERSTANDING HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING EXCLUSION IN ENHR
THE NEW EUROPEAN CONTEXT

15. Conclusions
 Data collection based on client registers run by service
providers is possible even when initial environment is not
supportive:
 ngos traditionally opposing local government
 local government underpaying services
 low level of understanding of the need for data collection
 low quality of existing registers
 rigorous Law on Personal Data Protection
 low budget
 domination of headcount mthodology in measuring
homelessness
European Research Conference, Budapest, 17th September 2010
UNDERSTANDING HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING EXCLUSION IN ENHR
THE NEW EUROPEAN CONTEXT

16. Futher Analysis
European Research Conference, Budapest, 17th September 2010
UNDERSTANDING HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING EXCLUSION IN ENHR
THE NEW EUROPEAN CONTEXT