The COMHOM project has reached an important milestone with the completion and publication of its Problem Space Report, concluding the first major phase of its three-year European research initiative. The report is the outcome of a year-long co-definition process – conducted throughout 2025 across five EU countries – that brought together 143 participants including social workers, service managers, policymakers, researchers, and people with direct lived experience of homelessness. Its purpose: to identify, from the ground up, the real structural barriers that prevent homelessness services from effectively monitoring and evaluating their own work.
This phase sets the foundation for everything that follows in the COMHOM project – from the design of a shared Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) Framework to the development of an AI-supported digital platform that will be tested with 20+ organisations across Europe.
A collaborative methodology built on lived reality
What distinguishes the COMHOM approach from traditional research is its commitment to participatory methods. Rather than starting from academic definitions or policy assumptions, the project invested its first phase in listening to the people closest to the issue.
This was made possible through the COMHOM Living Labs: collaborative environments described as «centres without walls», operating across Finland, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. Each Living Lab was hosted by a project partner and served as a space where different stakeholders could come together on equal footing to share perspectives, challenge assumptions, and co-define the problems that matter most.
Over the course of 2025, the Living Labs ran 59 sessions engaging 143 participants across five countries. The diversity of voices was intentional: the COMHOM methodology, grounded in Participatory Action Research and Design Science, is built on the principle that effective solutions can only be designed when those affected by a problem are active participants in defining it.
A shared picture of fragmented systems
Despite the significant differences between national welfare systems and policy contexts, the co-definition process revealed a strikingly consistent set of challenges across all five countries. Seven root causes were identified, each reflecting deep structural and systemic conditions that undermine the capacity of homelessness services to monitor, evaluate, and improve their work.
1. Fragmented and poorly coordinated service systems.
2. Lack of consistent M&E frameworks and shared outcome variables.
3. Weak digitalisation and low confidence in data-driven practices.
4. Over-reliance on emergency responses instead of prevention.
5. Inconsistent definitions of homelessness across countries.
6. Lack of EU-wide interoperability and harmonisation.
7. Structural factors increasing the risk of homelessness.
From problem definition to solution design
The Problem Space Report does not simply catalogue what is wrong, it maps a clear path toward what needs to change. Each of the seven root causes identified through the Living Labs has been directly translated into a set of solution approaches that will guide the next phases of the project.
The COMHOM consortium will now develop three interconnected outputs. First, it has already developed a shared M&E Framework, building on the ETHOS Light typology already adopted across the project, that defines what data should be collected, how it should be measured, and how it can be used to assess service impact across organisations and countries. Second, a digital platform designed to support organisations in recording, sharing, and analysing information in a way that is intuitive, interoperable with existing tools, and accessible to users with varying levels of digital confidence. Third, it has already started a programme of capacity-building support that strengthens organisations’ skills in data use, monitoring systems, and evidence-based practice.
The completion of the Problem Space Report marks the end of the co-definition phase and the beginning of a new stage of collaborative design. The COMHOM team is now working on the digital platform and continues to welcome the input of organisations, practitioners, and policymakers working in this field.
The COMHOM project has received funding from the European Union’s European Social Fund (ESF+) under Grant Agreement No. 101172624.