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Charity appointed to trial strategies that reduce homelessness in £15m initiative
A charity has been commissioned by the government to run a £15m programme to help tackle homelessness and reduce the number of rough sleepers.
The Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI) will conduct a series of trials into different strategies to tackle homelessness on behalf of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC).
Described as a first of its kind, the programme will seek to build evidence into how services across the public sector play into reducing homelessness and rough sleeping.
Four-fifths of the money will fund interventions and services not currently taking place in the homelessness sector in England, or which are too small to be tested.
The rest of the funding will cover the cost of impact evaluations.
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Approaches to be tested include personalised budgets for people with a history of rough sleeping, specialist employment support for people with experience of homelessness, and offering support and companionship through volunteers.
Other schemes include short-term housing for non-UK nationals who would otherwise sleep on the streets and testing the impact of integrating a health specialist into a rough sleeping outreach team.
At the same time, the charity will evaluate providing accommodation for people sleeping rough without a local connection, evaluating support for young people leaving care, and using council data to identify households at risk of homelessness and offer support to avoid court, bailiffs and additional costs.
Each project will require the recruitment of large numbers of local authorities and in some cases other organisations as participants.
The CHI will distribute millions of pounds in grants to local authorities and service providers that take part in the trials and evaluations to fund the schemes.
A homelessness system-wide evaluation will look at current government programmes, such as the Homelessness Prevention Grant, Rough Sleeping Initiative, Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme and Accommodation for Ex-Offenders scheme, to explore how they work together.
The programme was first announced in the cross-government strategy called Ending Rough Sleeping For Good, which was published by DLUHC in September 2022.
The CHI said it would confirm its plans for recruiting local authorities and homelessness service providers to take part in the projects “early in 2024”.
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