Canadian Observatory on Homelessness
The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness is the largest national research institute devoted to homelessness in Canada. The COH is the curator of the Homeless Hub.
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The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness is the largest national research institute devoted to homelessness in Canada. The COH is the curator of the Homeless Hub.
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Author(s): Isabel Baptista, Dennis P. Culhane, Nicholas Pleace, Eoin O’Sullivan
Publication Date: 2022
This policy review was commissioned by a group of organisations working in the homelessness sector across Ireland. A group of researchers from Ireland, Portugal, the UK and the US collaborated to review the 2016 Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness: Rebuilding Ireland from an international perspective.
Author(s): Nicholas Pleace
Organization: Centre for Housing Policy, University of York
Publication Date: 2019
This work is intended to describe and evaluate the existing evidence base on homelessness prevention, looking at the following areas:
How should prevention be targeted and organised to ensure that it is most effective in preventing homelessness?
How should homelessness prevention services be designed?
To what extent is specialist prevention needed for different groups of people who are homeless?
What is the role of prevention within an integrate...
Author(s): Nicholas Pleace, Isabel Baptista, Marcus Knutagård
Organization: Housing First Europe Hub
Publication Date: 2019
This report defines Housing First services as: support for homeless people that closely reflects the core principles and operational practice of the model originally developed by Dr Sam Tsem-beris and Pathways to Housing in the USA. Housing First is an intensive support model centred on enabling homeless people with high and complex needs to live in their own independent homes, exercising a very high degree of control over the nature of the suppo...
Author(s): Nicholas Pleace
Organization: University of York, Centre for Housing Policy
Publication Date: 2018
This report explores Housing First in relation to the evidence base on services designed to end homelessness among single people (i.e. lone adults) with support needs. Some attention is given to prevention and relief services, but this report is concerned with services for those single homeless people who require support as well as housing. The report does not encompass services for homeless families.
The report has four main objectives:
To cr...
Author(s): Nicholas Pleace
Organization: University of York, Centre for Housing Policy
Publication Date: 2018
This report explores Housing First in relation to the evidence base on services designed to end homelessness among single people (i.e. lone adults) with support needs. Some attention is given to prevention and relief services, but this report is concerned with services for those single homeless people who require support as well as housing. The report does not encompass services for homeless families.
The report has four main objectives:
To cr...
Author(s): Nicholas Pleace
Publisher: University of York
Publication Date: 2017
This paper begins by setting the 2016-2019 Action Plan for Preventing Homelessness in Finland, hereafter the ‘Action Plan’, in the context of the wider Finnish homelessness strategy. Following a summary of the Action Plan, the paper then undertakes a critical analysis of the preventative approach being taken, considering the strengths of the Finnish approach and the challenges that exist in reducing Finnish homelessness. The paper concludes with...

Author(s): Nicholas Pleace, Dennis P. Culhane
Organization: Crisis UK
Publication Date: 2016
This exploratory study examined patterns of service use over 90 days, among 86 single homeless people in England, to estimate the financial costs of homelessness for central and local government. In line with the results from international research, the findings indicate that significant public expenditure is occurring as a direct and indirect consequence of homelessness. The research indicates that a renewed emphasis on preventing and rapidly en...
Author(s): Deborah Quilgars, Nicholas Pleace
Publication Date: 2016
Housing First is now dominating discussions about how best to respond to homelessness among people with high and complex needs throughout the EU and in several countries within the OECD. Whilst recognised internationally as an effective model in addressing homelessness, little attention has been given as to whether Housing First also assists previously homeless people become more socially integrated into their communities. This paper reviews the...
Author(s): Nicholas Pleace
Organization: FEANTSA
Publication Date: 2016
The Guide is a resource about Housing First in Europe. It has been designed to explain what Housing First is and how it actually works in a range of European contexts. It sets out the core principles of Housing First and shows how these are implemented in different settings.
The Guide is the first European resource of its kind. As Housing First has taken off in Europe, a growing demand has emerged for knowledge and expertise. Until now, much of t...
Author(s): Nicholas Pleace, Marcus Knutagård, Dennis P. Culhane, Riitta Granfelt
Publisher: Canadian Observatory on Homelessness
Publication Date: 2016
This chapter describes the results of an international review of the Finnish National Homelessness Strategy, covering the Paavo I and Paavo II programs, which took place between 2008–2011 and 2012–2015. The strategy focused heavily on long-term homelessness, with targets to halve levels by 2011 and to eliminate long-term homelessness by 2015. Since first identifying homelessness as a social problem in the 1980s, Finland had already succeeded in r...
Author(s): Joanne Bretherton, Nicholas Pleace
Organization: Centre for Housing Policy, University of York
Publication Date: 2015
This observational study of Housing First services showed high levels of success in reducing long-term and repeated homelessness, which is associated with very high support needs. The successes of these English Housing First services reflect the results of positive evaluations of Housing First in North America and Europe.

Author(s): Nicholas Pleace, Dennis Culhane, Riitta Granfelt, Marcus Knutagård
Organization: Ministry of the Environment, Department of the Built Environment
Publication Date: 2015
The review covered the whole of the programme to reduce long-term homelessness implemented during 2008–2011 and 2012–2015, Paavo I and Paavo II. The review focused on the programme as a whole as well as its different aspects from the point of view of implementing the Housing First model in Finnish society. The review report described work on homelessness done in the United Kingdom, Sweden and the USA, focusing particularly on operating practices...

Author(s): Nicholas Pleace, Joanne Bretherton
Organization: Crisis
Publication Date: 2014
In the last three decades it has become apparent that homelessness is often characterised as much by a lack of social integration as by a lack of adequate, affordable and secure housing. Crisis developed Skylight to counteract the experiences of sustained worklessness, poverty, disconnection from family, friends and mainstream social life that can often characterise homelessness, particularly where that homelessness is sustained or recurrent. Sky...
Author(s): Mark Bevan, Nicholas Pleace
Organization: Simon Communities of Ireland
Publication Date: 2014
The research explored the impacts of the economic and policy context in which housing-led services are being introduced by Simon Communities, including housing supply and ongoing changes to health, social housing and welfare budgets. The research also explored examples of good practice in service delivery within the Simon Communities.
Author(s): Nicholas Pleace, Deborah Quilgars
Publication Date: 2003
This article examines the history of British homelessness research and its politicization over the past 40 years. The relationship between homelessness research and policy has been developing since the 1960s, and by the 1990s the majority of research was undertaken within the policy arena. In part, this has arisen because of the way in which research has been funded in the UK, with funding being dominated by government or those seeking to critici...
Author(s): Suzanne Fitzpatrick, Nicholas Pleace, Mark Bevan
Organization: Scottish Government, Scottish Executive Social Research
Publication Date: 2005
An evaluation of the Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) programme was undertaken by the Centre for Housing Policy, at the University of York, during the Autumn of 2004 and the Spring of 2005. The evaluation involved a critical review and analysis of existing research and statistical evidence, interviews with local authority officers responsible for RSI, national level interviews with individuals responsible for the development and delivery of RSI an...
Author(s): Nicholas Pleace
Publication Date: 1998
Recent research into single homelessness and rough sleeping has begun to consider the issue using the concepts and the language of social exclusion. This paper considers the new literature and what it may mean in terms of changing our understanding of single homelessness and rough sleeping (called street homelessness in the United States). The paper begins by reviewing the concept of social exclusion and the recent literature on single homelessne...
Author(s): Anna Ellison, Nicholas Pleace, Eric Hanvey
Publication Date: 2012
The purpose of the research was to help identify and overcome any barriers which may exist for vulnerable homeless people in both accessing and sustaining settled accommodation within the private rented sector (Authors).
Author(s): Isabel Baptista, Lars Benjaminsen, Nicholas Pleace, Volker Busch-Geertsema
Publication Date: 2012
Fifteen homelessness experts were asked to complete a questionnaire on the enumeration of homeless people, and the estimation of the homeless population in the 2011 national level censuses that took place across the European Union. The experts were requested to draw upon their own knowledge, collect and review relevant material that detailed census methodologies, which were related to homelessness. They also conducted interviews with staff in cen...
Author(s): Nicholas Pleace
Publication Date: 2011
There is strong evidence that the Pathways Housing First model can move homeless people with sustained experiences of living rough, with problematic drug and alcohol use, and with severe mental illness straight into ordinary housing, and successfully sustain them in that housing. However, three questions can be raised about what ‘Housing First’ is delivering in a wider sense. The first question centres on what is meant by ‘Housing First’ as an et...