On 26 September 2025, the Municipality of Athens, the City’s Reception and Solidarity Center (KYADA) and the University of Manchester hosted an international forum at the Melina Mercouri Cultural Center in Athens. It wasn’t a ceremonial meeting but a working one: practitioners and researchers from Greece, the United Kingdom and Chile sat down to trade practical ways to support people living without shelter and to look closely at how Athens’ street-work is progressing.
How did Athens bring global expertise together?
In the room were social workers, psychologists, researchers and frontline street-work teams, along with students and volunteers who work with municipal services. Sessions zeroed in on field-tested methods that link people on the streets with health care, social support and housing. They also paid attention to the different realities in Athens, Manchester and Santiago.
Who participated in the forum?
Besides municipal experts, guests from Britain and Chile added their views. The program put a spotlight on social enterprises like the ANESTIOS second-hand bookstore, which gives people leaving homelessness a paid role, and the street magazine Shedia, a long-standing example of social entrepreneurship in Athens. There was also a collaboration with the University of West Attica: students showed a graphics exhibition inspired by homelessness and community action.
What practices were shared to support people experiencing homelessness?
Panels tackled substance use, mental health, access to social services and what effective outreach looks like day to day. Teams compared how they coordinate, how case management flows, and which low-threshold steps actually work on the street. Early stories from Athens’ Street Work team stood out, showing how steady contact and cooperation across agencies can open the door to shelter, health care and longer-term housing.
How is Street Work performing this year?
As part of the city’s wider Street Work actions, Athens reports significant activity between February and August 2025:
- 3,556 targeted street interventions
- Nearly 7,500 services delivered
- 43 people integrated into municipal housing structures
- Over 300 referrals to partner organizations
What do the numbers show?
These numbers suggest outreach is scaling up and referral links are getting tighter. Demand is still high in central Athens and farther out, but the pattern is clear: repeated, coordinated contact and tailored help make people more likely to use services and move into housing.
How did local authorities respond?
The Municipality of Athens and KYADA said they will add more capacity to the Street Work team and the Multipurpose Homeless Center. Their next steps: run systematic counts, open more routes into housing and build new partnerships in Europe and beyond. The KYADA project “Street Work Actions” sits within the Attica 2021-2027 program (OPS 6016634) and is co-funded by the European Social Fund.
What does this mean for the city?
For residents and local partners, the forum signals that Athens is staying the course with an evidence-based approach to homelessness. By mixing outreach, social enterprise and ideas shared across borders, the city wants to turn small pilot wins into lasting housing options and easier access to services for people without a home.
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