The Housing First England programme, delivered by Homeless Link, has been working to promote, support and grow a national movement of Housing First services across England since 2016.
In 2019, Crisis joined with Homeless Link to deliver the next stage of the project, which is funded by Comic Relief, Crisis and the Nationwide Foundation.
Housing First England aims to:
- Identify and produce practical solutions to the barriers to implementing Housing First at scale.
- Create the optimum political and operational foundations for a national roll-out of Housing First as appropriate.
- Support organisations to create and develop excellent Housing First services in line with the Principles for Housing First in England.
- To grow the evidence for the efficacy of Housing First across a range of housing markets, commissioning arrangements and sectors.
- To promote Housing First as one of a wider range of housing led solutions that can help to end homelessness.
Homeless Link is a member of the Housing First Europe Hub, a group of organisations, public authorities and foundations working to scale up Housing First in Europe. Staff from Housing First England are commissioned by the hub to deliver train-the-trainer courses across Europe.
Homeless Link is also involved in the evaluations of the Government Housing First pilots in England and Scotland.
To find out more about our work, read the Housing First England 2016-18 project evaluation.