Tom Rønning

Tom is a strategic consultant with the Social Housing Department in the Municipality of Odense, previously working with the Danish Refugee Council. He has been involved in social housing and urban residencies for nearly 25 years, and that’s on both a local and a national level, creating and developing projects for not only socially exposed people, but for all the different groups of citizens that fill up a city.

– Inclusion is a keyword for our municipality, but by that we mean inclusion for all types of people. We believe all citizens have a right to feel safe and secure in their urban environment, so our projects are all about how we meet the needs of different groups of people to make that happen, Tom says.

One of these projects involved tracking homeless people via GPS trackers – with their consent, of course – to gain insights into how this particular group of people moves around and what their needs are in particular areas at particular times. Tom explains that this also becomes relevant to other citizen groups, because homeless people are more visible in an urban environment.

Tom has also participated in international work in the area of ​homelessness for the last eight years and he represents the Municipality of Odense on the steering committee of HABITACT.