The challenge we’re solving

Homelessness is rising across Europe, affecting over 895,000 people from increasingly diverse social groups. Despite its urgency, fragmented and decentralised systems continue to limit effective responses.

COMHOM is a three-year project tackling this challenge through a participatory, systemic, and data-driven approach. Using Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), the project brings together people experiencing homelessness, frontline professionals, and policymakers to co-create more effective and inclusive support systems.

Operating across five EU countries – Finland, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain – COMHOM supports the European Pillar of Social Rights and the Lisbon Declaration on combating homelessness.

Project Partners

         

Project goals

COMHOM is structured around three interconnected areas of work, each building on the last to drive systemic change – from understanding the problem, to co-designing solutions, to testing them in real-world settings.

 

Illustration of COMHOM’s three-phase approach: defining challenges, co-designing a solution, and testing it in real-world settings.

Our role

VOH.CoLAB leads Work Package 2: Social Innovation and Co-Creation, drawing on our experience in participatory health research and stakeholder engagement. Our contribution includes:

  • Setting up and coordinating the 5 COMHOM Living Labs.
  • Facilitating stakeholder engagement across all three spaces: problem, solution, and deployment.
  • Designing and leading co-creation activities with homeless individuals, social care providers, and policymakers.
  • Supporting the development of inclusive, context-sensitive solutions.

Lead VOH researcher

Salomé Pádua Azevedo, PhD

Head of Digital Transformation

The impact we hope to create

Through data, dialogue, and digital innovation, COMHOM aims to build more effective homelessness response systems across Europe. The project is expected to generate the following impacts:

  • More inclusive and responsive services through co-created tools and practices;
  • Stronger cross-sector collaboration among social care providers, authorities, and community actors;
  • Enhanced capacity for innovation within service delivery systems;
  • Policy-ready evidence to inform local and European strategies on homelessness;
  • Empowerment of people experiencing homelessness as active contributors in shaping the solutions that affect them.

 

The COMHOM project has received funding from the European Union’s European Social Fund (ESF+) under Grant Agreement No. 101172624.