FEDERATION EUROPEENNE D'ASSOCIATIONS NATIONALES TRAVAILLANT AVEC LES SANS-ABRI

Their core work

FEANTSA is Europe's principal umbrella body for NGOs working with people experiencing homelessness, coordinating national member associations across Europe to advance evidence-based housing and social policy. In EU research projects, they contribute practitioner networks, policy expertise, and direct access to frontline service providers and homeless communities — assets that academic partners cannot replicate. Their H2020 participation shows two distinct contributions: framing homelessness as a structural inequality problem (HOME_EU), and facilitating access to hard-to-reach homeless populations for health research (CANCERLESS). As a Brussels-based advocacy organization, they also serve as a conduit between research outputs and EU-level policy processes.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their first H2020 project (2016–2019), FEANTSA's contribution centered on framing homelessness through a justice and social innovation lens — documenting unfairness and testing systemic responses to long-term homelessness. By their second project (2021–2024), the focus shifted markedly toward health: cancer prevention, early detection, and person-centred care delivered to homeless populations. This transition suggests the organization is broadening its role from purely policy and advocacy work into health equity research, acting as an essential bridge between public health science and the NGO sector.

FEANTSA is moving from documenting social exclusion toward enabling health interventions within homeless communities, making them an increasingly relevant partner for public health and health equity research consortia.

How they like to work

FEANTSA has participated in both projects as a partner, never as coordinator — consistent with their role as a network facilitator rather than a research-executing institution. They bring essential non-technical assets: access to member organizations, community trust, and policy dissemination channels. Their average EC funding per project is very modest (EUR ~43K), suggesting their contribution is scoped to specific tasks such as recruitment, dissemination, or policy translation rather than leading research workpackages.

Across two projects, FEANTSA has connected with 23 distinct consortium partners spanning 11 countries — a broad European footprint that reflects their continent-wide membership base. There is no apparent geographic concentration; their value is pan-European reach rather than depth in any single country.

What sets them apart

FEANTSA is irreplaceable in any EU research project that needs access to homeless populations, frontline NGO service providers, or credible dissemination into housing and social policy circles. No academic institution or research SME can offer what they bring: a standing network of national member associations that operate homeless services daily across Europe. For health, housing, or social inclusion research consortia that need community engagement or policy impact pathways, FEANTSA converts research findings into actionable advocacy in a way that journal publications alone cannot achieve.

Highlights from their portfolio

• CANCERLESS
  An unusual and high-impact combination of oncology and social exclusion — co-adapting cancer screening and prevention protocols for homeless populations across Europe, where FEANTSA's community access was the critical enabling factor.
• HOME_EU
  One of the first EU-funded projects to frame homelessness explicitly as a social unfairness problem and test social innovation responses, establishing FEANTSA's role as a research-facing policy organization.