Housing First

Housing First is an intervention which seeks to resolve homelessness (particularly street homelessness and rough sleeping) through the provision of housing (without any precondition), and then inputting relevant services for the service user, rather than having interventions first and housing as an afterthought.  It recognises that the provision of suitable, long-term housing is the fulcrum for everything else.  It is fair to say that it has taken hold globally, although it started in the US.  The way I feel about it is that it has the same trappings in principle as restorative justice and mediation – who could be against those kinds of interventions?  However, like mediation and restorative justie, there are lots of different varieties, and proselytisers.  If I sound a bit cynical, maybe I am.

In any event, my cynicism is not matched by the multiplicity of policy interventions for which great claims are made.  And, Housing First has been accepted by the Welsh Government, it seems, as the kind of programme which has the potential for significant benefits.  There are national principles and guidance for Wales from 2018.  And, we are told, it does work.  For example, in the White Paper on ending homelessness, it is remarked (para 193):

“The various Housing First projects operating across sixteen local authorities in Wales illustrate how an intense form of wraparound public service support can assist individuals in maintaining their tenancies, with the average tenancy sustainment rate at 90% recorded up to September 2021.”

As a recently published report, which evaluates programmes supported by the Henry Smith Charity, says, it “has long since passed the point at which the proof of concept has been demonstrated”.  That report evaluates the project run in Gwynedd (hello again) by Shelter Cymru (hello again), which was particularly affected by the impact of Covid.  This project had no direct access to accommodation, and no direct relationship with a social housing provider, so it is interesting.  Keeping people in TA runs counter to the Housing First ethos, and the Gwynedd project relied on PRS accommodation.  The lack of access to social housing was regarded to undermine the model because recipients were kept in TA for too long.  Furthermore, as the evaluation notes, the model is not a “quick fix” but a process which is in action.  The evaluation offers some really thoughtful discussion about whether, in the UK context, one should have high fidelity to a model that was developed in a different context and culture, which is expensive to resource, or adopt a more local, context-sensitive model but which might see a cheaper model as the way forward (with attendant risks).

If this is your bag, the evaluation by outstanding housing researchers, steeped in this literature, is worth a read (although it does cover English schemes too).