Best practice Austria FAWOS "Centre for Secure Tenancy" A Cooperation between NGO Volkshilfe Wien (People s Aid Vienna) and the Municipality of Vienna 1. Background At the beginning it is good to mention a few words about the generall situation in Austria or in Vienna it means something about the background. Vienna is the capital of Austria and covers a territory of 315 km² with 1.8 million inhabitants. Almost half of the current housing stock dates back to the period before 1918. In Vienna there are 750.000 dwellings of two different kinds: The private market, including buildings owned by private enterprises or people, provides 530.000 apartments. The 220.000 remaining dwellings are owned and run by the Municipality of Vienna. Therefore the Municipality of Vienna is currently one of the world's leading landlords. Old council housing in particular is cheap, affordable and is rented out for unlimited periods of time. The private housing market offers both owner-occupied apartments and rental apartments for limited or unlimited contracts. The amount of rent depends on location, furniture and finishings, terms of tenancy and age of the apartment. In Vienna 20.000 cases concerning living space are brought to court each year. Almost half of these cases result in a verdict allowing the landlord to apply for eviction and to have the tenant removed from the dwelling. 6.000 eviction orders are fixed every year. 2. Situation before 1996 The City of Vienna provided mainly in the wintertime large hostels for the homeless. Some of these buildings were constructed before 1900 and most of them were still of the housing standard of this century. During the 1980 s and 1990`s the number of the homeless in Vienna has sharply increased. The main factors for this phenomenon were a drastic rise in the rents on the private housing market. Additionally, more and more women and their children as well as persons with regular jobs became homeless. The town council tried to cope with the growth in the number of homeless people by providing additional temporary shelters. Some of the inhabitants of public shelters had actually grown up as children in public shelters, a trend that had to be stopped in order to avoid recurrent homelessness. 1
Before FAWOS started its work in 1996, two thirds of all scheduled evictions were actually carried out. Each year some 4,000 families lost their apartment and had to look for a new home or seek refuge in a shelter. Another issue was how to obtain affordable apartments on the housing market as each vacated private apartment is subject to higher rents for the new tenants. To achieve the goal of reducing of an increasing number of estimated 5000 homeless people; the City councilors for housing and social affairs entrusted the Volkshilfe Wien (People s Aid Vienna) and the Administration for social affairs in 1996 to study the causes for eviction. 3. Establishment of FAWOS Therefore 1996 FAWOS was established and started as a project of research, financed by the Viennese Housing Research, a department of the Municipality of Vienna. FAWOS is run by the NGO People s Aid Vienna (Volkshilfe Wien) and had in the beginning a team of four social workers and one secretary (one social worker from the Department for Social Affairs and one from the Vienna Youth Welfare Department). It is also supported by the Viennese Fund of Integration (Wiener Integrationsfonds), which is responsible for foreigners. At the beginning in 1996 FAWOS was responsible for the 20 th district (Vienna has alltogether 23 districts), for all dwellings. The aim was to decrease the number of the homeless and find out if the concept would work. And it did, so in 1997 FAWOS assumed responsibility also for the 2 nd district, two more social workers started to work at FAWOS, one more from the Municipality and one from the People s Aid Vienna. The following year, in 1998, the competence expanded to all 23 districts of Vienna, but only for the private housing stock (530.000 apartments). The Department for Social Affairs and the Youth Welfare Department got responsible for the dwellings owned by the municipality. At the moment, 11 social workers (3 men and 8 women) and 3 secretaries (women) work at FAWOS. Concerning the qualification it is expected to be a (graduated) social worker (DSA) to work here. There are no volunteers, all people are full-time employed. 4. Objectives of FAWOS FAWOS is a central place for all tenants of private flats in Vienna who are threatened to lose their flats. The objective is to secure the existing flat and with it the prevention of becoming homeless. In the medium term, existing shelters for the homeless should be released. In the long term, a successful prevention should enable a step by step reduction of shelters for the homeless and is a substantial part of the Viennese hostel reform. Prevention of eviction means, for the people concerned, the prevention of personal suffering. Important socialising processes (particularly with children) do not get interrupted. With the 2
plan of FAWOS there is a homogeneously organised securing of housing with quick and efficient help offered. One of the principles of FAWOS and a very important part is offering "help for self-help". The goal is to restore as quickly as possible a person's ability to take decisions concerning their personal life and to provide financial help very fast. 5. Working method of FAWOS Access The Austrian law governing tenancy comprises 2 articles, which put the courts under the obligation to inform the Municipality of Vienna about the beginning of a procedure concerning living space and about the dates of evictions. FAWOS gets this information and is thus able to contact the people threatened by eviction. Outreach is essential to the success of the enterprise and several methods are used to contact people at risk: letters to tenants facing summons through social organisations and through public awareness campaigns. From the first contact with families or people at risk, FAWOS clearly conveys the message that it is there to help people help themselves. The following points are a selection of the service offered by the team of FAWOS: 1. Social workers provide counseling on how to meet one's basic housing needs independently; 2. Information on the law governing tenancy and tenant rights and on how to avoid loss of one's home; 3. Information on the right to claim benefits and assistance; 4. Drafting of an individual financial plan since in most cases rent debts are the reason for the threatening eviction. This is particularly important, as oftentimes expenditures by far exceed income and priorities, on what to spend money on, need to be revised. Counseling and social support may help to increase people's income; 5. Assistance in negotiations with landlords and lawyers. Landlords tend to want to receive their money on time and are reluctant to incur any trouble with their tenants. Evictions are usually costly and take up valuable time; 3
6. Cooperation with and transfer to other social institutions. FAWOS has not the capacity to help the clients with their other problems such as unemployment, addiction, other debts, psychic problems or to find another flat if it s not possible to secure the existing flat. FAWOS is able to offer financial support for covering rent debts according to the principle of "help for self-help" and only if there are good pre-conditions that the clients can afford their rents in the future. 6. Results achieved Main outcome: Compared with the figures of the year 1995, FAWOS succeeded in reducing evictions from 63 percent of cases to 36,5 percent the first year, and to 25 percent in the following years. In summary we can say that all objectives of the concept were achieved and FAWOS has been able to provide security of tenancy as well as timely and efficient assistance to persons threatened by eviction. Due to good contacts with houseowners, property managers and lawyers, which were achieved over the years, it is easier to find a solution formed by the employees of FAWOS together with the clients. By now landlords or lawyers even send tenants to FAWOS before they go to court, because they have confidence in the work of FAWOS. In January 2001 the government of Austria intended to make changes in the law governing tenancy which would have made it easier for landlords to evict tenants. FAWOS lobbied across the country garnering support from all social institutions to stop the intended modifications. The intense lobbying has paid off well and the intended modification of the law governing tenancy was stopped in February 2001. The results and the quality of the work must be proved. There is a regular cooperation between FAWOS, Volkshilfe Wien (People s Aid Vienna) and the Municipality of Vienna regarding the quality assurance. 2005 FAWOS carried out an investigation about the sustainability of its work. One of the main objectives was to review the effectivness of the chosen approaches. According to the results of this investigation FAWOS can plan next steps. One of the results: financial support is a sustainable instrument to assure the flats. Every year FAWOS writes an annual report where there is information about the general activities and data but also about the sustainability and plans for the future. 7. Lessons learned Prevention in this field is very important. The following points must be borne in mind if highquality efficient prevention work is to be achieved: Laws are complicated, they are amended over the years and in many cases are incomprehensible for the tenants. The staff at FAWOS is trained by lawyers to provide proper counselling to our clients. Clients need to contact the professional staff in time if the process should be successful. Once a person has been evicted there is nothing to do but refer them to existing services for the homeless. 4
Priorities must be set properly by the tenants. This is a very important point of the advice of FAWOS. Holding on to a home is more important than owning a car, paying off a credit or paying insurance. Losing one s home often means losing one's job, incurring debts and becoming emotionally oppressed. To establish documentation of the work and success in avoiding evictions it is necessary to receive information on the results of evictions. As laws on data protection are very strict in Austria, the people of FAWOS need the consent of the person concerned to find out from the district court whether an eviction has actually taken place or not. Public relations Many of the clients found out about FAWOS through public relations and sought advice and help before an action concerning their apartment was filed. Public relations are thus an elementary part of this work. Reports on these activities on TV, in newspapers and on the radio have resulted in an increasing number of tenants approaching the advisers of FAWOS with their concerns about losing their living accommodation. FAWOS distributed folders to public and social institutions. The workers of FAWOS also say: We need the support of politically responsible authorities to put our concept into practice. It is they who decide how to finance the staff required running FAWOS. We also need the co-operation of other political and social institutions. At FAWOS we have established a network with district councils, district courts, the Department for Social Affairs, the Youth Welfare Department and the Viennese Fund of Integration. 8. Transferability The plan of FAWOS is worldwide applicable under certain circumstances. Everywhere, where people are endangered to lose their flats through statutory or other foreseeable circumstances, it is possible to work preventively. A basic precondition is a political willingness of the State concerned (county or city) to prevent additionally to a re-integration. It is less expensive to prevent people from losing their flats than to re-integrate them or to accommodate them in a new flat. It is necessary to have information about endangered persons. On personnel resources qualified social workers, office workers, jurists, interpreters are needed, as well as continuous training for better and more efficient assistance. To give correct information and legal advice the employees have to be trained on legal aspects. As experiences in Austria show, most persons concerned lose their flats because of rent debts. Therefore it is absolutely necessary to assist with financial support. On the other hand it does not make sense to secure a flat, if the client has no financial or other perspective to keep the flat in future. Some of the people will not be able to live without help. In these cases it could be better to transfer them to an institution, which offers supervised housing. 5
Cooperation on the side of the house owners, the property management, and the lawyers is necessary to accept a solution formed by the employees of a welfare centre together with the clients. On account of the positive results other Austrian cities have already started or are trying to initiate similar facilities. 9. Conclusion The research done by the social workers of FAWOS shows that there are many possibilities of helping people threatened by eviction if contact can be established with the client in a timely manner. FAWOS has demonstrated the feasibility and desirability of reducing the number of evictions significantly. Prevention helps to minimise the cost of social welfare and in the case of evictions, can represent savings to society by a factor of seven: Research proved that housing the people concerned in hostels is much more expensive, than the protection of existing flats because of high personnel costs and administrative expenses, caused by the long residence of homeless people in hostels. Last but not least one of the most important benefits: Prevention of eviction means, for the people concerned, the prevention of personal suffering. Important socialising processes (particularly with children) do not get interrupted. Renate Kitzman and Lucie Prochazkova 1, Vienna 2006 1 Many thanks to DSA Renate Kitzman from FAWOS for all information. 6