Dr Tsemberis discussed the origins and development of Housing First, the key principles that underpin it, and the evidence of its effectiveness. He was excited to be in New Zealand again having been a key presenter at the CHA-IMPACT conference in 2015. He was pleased to see the progress of Housing First Auckland, a collective of five service providers established to support the four Housing First programmes set up and now jointly funded by MSD and Auckland Council. The service providers in the collective are Affinity Services working in Central and West Auckland, Lifewise together with Auckland City Mission in the City centre, LinkPeople in South Auckland and VisionWest in West Auckland.
CHA Senior Programme Manager, David Zussman says, “One key message I took away from this was that Housing First requires a paradigm shift. We, service providers, need to stop trying to change the person and start changing our way of thinking. We need to change our approach so it’s about the recipients and not the service.”
A copy of Dr Sam Tsemberis’s presentation can be found here:
An introduction to Housing First Dr Sam Tsemberis MARCH 22 2017 (1).pdf
