Symbios - shared housing

The idea of shared housing started as an inspiration from a running project several years ago. It became a living house full of young people. I can accompany their first steps into independent living. New beginnings. It's time to get inspiration and time to inspire others. 

My motto says: If you refuse to recall your dreams, what you are really doing is denying your own existence. 

 Our intention is to verify the functionality of the model in other cities / municipalities in the Czech Republic. Currently, we need to focus on strengthening the organization to provide solid foundations for the development of the project. 

We also want to develop communication with the lay and professional public, map the issue of young people leaving institutional care/ substitute family care and develop work with data on the situation and needs of the target group.

In 2012, I visited in Vienna the VinziRast project with Masaryk´s University students for the first time – it is shared housing for homeless people and students in Vienna.  I was touched by both the real results of the project and the atmosphere that prevailed in it - the effort not to save, but to support in their own activities. The principle of a certain non-judgment, which does not block important internal changes. After three years, two other colleagues and I decided to carry out a similar project in the Czech Republic focused on local issues. I started my psychotherapeutic training. I created a team that prepared the project for free. I convinced the city to give us a house. I went around the institutional care houses with my team (project manager, two mentors, two external therapists) and prepared everything so that in June 2019 the project could start working. The project works successfully after almost two years. 

I believe, in 5 years the concept of shared housing Symbios will be developed, the idea will be extended to other czech cities and hopefully the legislation at national level will reflect the project´s results.  

Young adults from children's homes have a very difficult time entering independent life. In children's homes, they have learned to listen and live according to rigid daily structures that cannot be used much in independent life. In addition, they are not used to accept responsibility and have internal motivation and structure. Therefore, more than 60% of them end up either as drug addicts, homeless or in prison. In the Czech Republic, there is not yet an effective tool to address this issue and deal with it at the system level. 

Symbios solves the problem of the transition of young adults from institutional care to independent living. We see the solution in shared housing with university students, where peer-to-peer competencies are transferred in everyday situations. Stable housing, individual work (mentoring, psychotherapy and self-development activities), integration into the labour market and building relationships between young adults, students and mentors are the main interventions. By meeting two different groups of young people with different social capital, social bubbles are disturbed and both words are enriched. 

The final form of the project was significantly influenced by the gestalt therapeutic approach, which emphasizes the healing potential of long-term relationships and the concept of paradoxical theory of change - which says that change has the potential to occur when we accept the parts of ourselves that we would like to change. 

I believe that housing security, combined with support for finding work and authentic relationships at various levels, will enable young adults to develop, which will lead to a higher ability to live independently after leaving the project. I believe that relationships in which there is room for the joy of success and not finding guilt heal in the long run and create internal structures that, unlike those externally accepted from the outside, work for a long time. 

The project creates a community of young people who can meet daily to solve everyday life situations. For these young people it means four years of housing guaranteed in the beginning, when few basic rules are followed. Stable point in life which allows them to grow. 

The motto of the project says: "Support where needed, independence where possible…" The first two years of the project proves us right. 

Symbios facilitate the meeting of two different social groups, university students and young adults from institutional care. They both learn from each other, they both grow side by side, which allows them a better understanding, teaches tolerance, and might change their life attitudes.