Housing First Feasibility Study:Expansion of Services in Northern Ireland

This feasibility study was commissioned by the NI Housing Executive (hereafter NIHE), and commenced in April 2023. Whilst Housing First has been in place on a relatively small scale in Northern Ireland since 2013, the aims of the study were to look in depth at the feasibility of delivering Housing First across Northern Ireland, alongside developing an evidence base for the current provision and creating a scalable model for further development. The client indicated an underlying rationale for the study was to enable the NIHE to address the challenges associated with housing people with high needs who were experiencing homelessness within the particular context of Northern Ireland. The study specification also included a request to broadly replicate the Housing First Feasibility Study for the Liverpool City Region11 which informed the development of Housing First in Liverpool with a view to this research providing a similar contribution to the expansion of Housing First in Northern Ireland.