Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Supported housing is a scheme where housing and socio-educational support services are provided as an integrated package. Consequently, it should be targeted to family units that cannot access or afford adequate housing and, simultaneously, have other axes of exclusion which require socio-educational support. In this study we assess if current users of supported housing services from Barcelona’s Supported Housing Network do fulfill the profile of its target population.

We find that over a fourth of the families that were living in supported housing in July 2018 did not fulfill the target population profile. More concretely, 13,8% of them were fully autonomous and therefore did not require any socio-educational support; 5,4% needed socio-educational support but had enough resources to afford adequate housing; and 7,6% of family units were in a situation of full autonomy and availability of resources to access adequate housing.

These deviations represent an inefficient use of resources since supported housing is being used by family units whose needs could be covered by less intensive schemes. However, supported housing service providers struggle to refer users due to the unavailability of suitable alternatives in the city. Therefore, additional policies, such as housing benefits or in-home support, are required to facilitate referrals from Barcelona’s Supported Housing Network to more adequate services and reduce leakage.