Ending Homelessness - A Housing-Led Approach

The Programme for Government 2011, contains a commitment to ending long term homelessness and the need to sleep rough by implementing a ‘housing first’ approach and to strengthen preventative services. It further proposes that services should be aligned to these overarching objectives following a review of the existing strategies and up-dating them to reflect these policy objectives. Considerable strides have been made since the publication in 2008 of The Way Home: A Strategy to Address Adult Homelessness in Ireland. The development of a housing led approach to ending homelessness was implicit rather than explicit in ‘The Way Home’, and the primary purpose of this document is to make explicit this policy principle. Thus, the document does not review the ‘The Way Home’, as the Strategy remains operational until the end of 2013, rather it aims to enhance the existing framework by outlining the evidence for an explicit housing led approach.