Q+A with Hannah Gousy, Winston Churchill Fellow

Hannah Gousy, Policy and Public Affairs Manager at Crisis in the United Kingdom, was recently in Edmonton to learn about the city’s plan to end homelessness and how it is impacting change on a national level. Awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship, Hannah’s research is an examination of political campaigning strategies for ending homelessness. The Fellowship supports her travels to Spain, the United States, Austria and Canada to learn about successful political strategies and commitments to ending homelessness. She will bring these findings and solutions back to the UK with the intent to establish long-lasting and sustained change. Our team caught up with Hannah during her visit to Homeward Trust and discussed Crisis, the Winston Churchill Fellowship and more.

Homeward Trust Edmonton: Tell us about Crisis and your role there.

Hannah Gousy: I work at Crisis, which is a national homelessness charity based in the UK and operates in England, Scotland and Wales. Crisis has service-delivery centers that operate across all three nations, providing front-line services to help end people’s homelessness.

I work in the Policy and Campaigns team, which – working with others – helps generate the solutions needed to end homelessness all together and campaigning for the change needed to achieve that, such as building public support for political change or working with politicians to implement the policies we know are essential in ending homelessness.

HTE: What is England’s plan to end homelessness?

HG: In England we have a commitment to half rough-sleeping by 2022 and end it all together by 2027, but we don’t have a commitment or strategy in place around tackling and preventing wider-form homelessness like people living in temporary forms of accommodation or those who are doubling up—what you call here, couch-surfing. Everybody In: How to End Homelessness in Great Britain helps to set out what homelessness ended will look like in the UK. There are around 150 policy recommendations [in the plan], but largely it looks at housing-led or housing-first approaches to ending homelessness, focusing on prevention, legislative reforms, increasing our affordable housing supply, and providing a robust safety net.

HTE: Is this Britain’s first 10-year plan?

HG: Yes. It was an amazing process putting it together [Everybody In: How to End Homelessness in Great Britain] and we managed to consult with over 1000 people who either work front-line delivering homelessness services, work in policy, or have lived experience of homelessness themselves. Around a third of the people we worked with to put the plan together had experience

HTE: What is the Winston Churchill Fellowship?

HG: At the time that [the plan] was published last June, I applied for a Winston Churchill Fellowship. You apply for a project of your choosing—you can propose any topic you want, which is really cool. I was really keen on going to countries around the world where they have been working really well to end homelessness; they have political commitments and plans in place; and look at the campaigning and advocacy work that went into achieving those plans and commitments, which is why I chose to come to Canada. I’ve been doing some work at Crisis with Tim Richter [President and CEO of Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness]—he has endorsed Crisis’ plan to end homelessness—and recommended that Edmonton would be a great place to visit. It feels like so much of the work that has happened here in Edmonton and the vision set out are being reflected on a national level.

HTE: What cities are you visiting to conduct your research?

HG: Barcelona, Madrid, Washington, Houston, Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto and Vienna. These are all places where political administrations have made commitments and put plans in place designed to end homelessness.

HTE: Homeward Trust acts as a system-planner coordinating a
community-based approach to address homelessness in Edmonton. What is the structure
at Crisis?

HG: We have a different system at home, and the model you have here is very similar to the one I’ve just been learning about in Houston.

The organization I was visiting in Houston also oversaw the city’s coordinated access program. One of the things that I have been super impressed with both in America and here is in the ways the coordinated approach at a local level has been driven by evidence of what works to end homelessness. We don’t have a shared outcomes framework at home, which would be essential in helping to end homelessness for good.

HTE: From what you’ve learned so far, what are you excited to bring
to the UK?

HG: Making sure that all homelessness services are driven by the data of what works is very important in ending homelessness.

This approach at the local level in Edmonton has undoubtedly been very important in influencing the work of the federal government. It’s clear that what is taking place here has demonstrated to politicians that there are real and workable solutions to reducing and ending homelessness for good in Canada.

The second is the way in which campaigners have taken data on what works to end homelessness to make effective cost-benefit arguments to help win political support to end homelessness.

I’m now looking forward to finding out more in Toronto and Ottawa about the work that’s taken place to establish a right to housing for all Canadians and what more can be done to prevent homelessness occurring in the first place.