Camden Housing First:a Housing First experiment in London

The research was developed following initial informal discussions between the research team and a senior Single Homeless Project (SHP) manager in 2010. SHP wanted independent research to be conducted on an experimental ‘Housing First’ service that they had developed in response to a call from an elected municipality responsible for an area of central London, also known as a London borough, called Camden Council. Like other London boroughs, Camden has both a strategic and a legal responsibility for homelessness within its boundaries. The research was a small scale observational exercise that tracked the progress of CAMHF over the course of 14 months. Initial fieldwork visits took place two months after the project had come into operation, when CAMHF had just two people using the service, in April 2012, followed by fieldwork visits in July and early August 2012, when CAMHF had been running for six months. A final round of fieldwork was conducted from late March to May 2013, when CAMHF had been operational for just over one year.