{"id":111,"date":"2025-02-25T20:03:02","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T20:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/?p=111"},"modified":"2025-02-25T20:07:43","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T20:07:43","slug":"housing-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/housing-first\/","title":{"rendered":"Housing First"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 It recognises that the provision of suitable, long-term housing is the fulcrum for everything else.\u00a0 It is fair to say that it has taken hold globally, although it started in the US.\u00a0 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?\u00a0 However, like mediation and restorative justie, there are lots of different varieties, and proselytisers.\u00a0 If I sound a bit cynical, maybe I am.<\/p>\n

In any event, my cynicism is not matched by the multiplicity of policy interventions for which great claims are made.\u00a0 And, Housing First has been accepted by the Welsh Government, it seems, as the kind of programme which has the potential for significant benefits.\u00a0 There are national principles and guidance<\/a> for Wales from 2018.\u00a0 And, we are told, it does work.\u00a0 For example, in the White Paper on ending homelessness<\/a>, it is remarked (para 193):<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a recently published report<\/a>, 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”.\u00a0 That report evaluates the project run in Gwynedd (hello again) by Shelter Cymru (hello again), which was particularly affected by the impact of Covid.\u00a0 This project had no direct access to accommodation, and no direct relationship with a social housing provider, so it is interesting.\u00a0 Keeping people in TA runs counter to the Housing First ethos, and the Gwynedd project relied on PRS accommodation.\u00a0 The lack of access to social housing was regarded to undermine the model because recipients were kept in TA for too long.\u00a0 Furthermore, as the evaluation notes, the model is not a “quick fix” but a process which is in action.\u00a0 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).<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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 […]","protected":false},"author":7123,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[30,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homelessness","category-uncategorised"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}