Why Homeful?

Before the pandemic even hit, more than 121,000 young people needed support because they were facing or experiencing homelessness.

This inspired Professor Jo Richardson to focus on youth homelessness as the focus for the fundraising for her Chartered Institute of Housing Presidential campaign, and she decided to work to support the charity End Youth Homelessness

There were two key strands to the homeful project: (1) a fundraising campaign to support End Youth Homelessness and (2) a co-produced research project, funded by a collective industry research grant, which explored housing led approaches to resolving and preventing all forms of homelessness in the UK.

The Homeful Story

Reflecting on an experience volunteering with a homelessness charity in New York in the early 1990’s and considering what she had learned over the last 25 years in her practitioner roles and academic research on the meaning of home, she devised the Homeful campaign and project. Homeful is a newly made-up word combining ‘hopeful’ and ‘home’ and is offered as an antonym to homeless. Or, as Susie Dent might argue, a much needed lost positive (head over to the podcast and press page to hear more from Susie on this).

The project and campaign were launched in July 2021. The research project focused on exploring housing-led approaches to resolving and preventing all forms of homelessness. A short launch report was made available to start the project and a final report was launched in March 2023. Please head over to the Homeful Research page for further information.

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