Ending Homelessness in New Zealand: Housing First – Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) Project: outcomes for people housed
The IDI at Statistics NZ links government administrative data, such as health, social welfare, corrections and police data. It allows researchers to look at the de-identified, anonymous interactions of people with these services.
This research began in 2016. It is using the IDI across a wide range of datasets to evaluate outcomes for 390 consenting clients of The People’s Project – up to 30 years before being housed and at two and five years after they were housed. The aim is to show the effect, pre- and post-housing, on people’s wellbeing, and the extent of savings available to government across a range of government-provided services by adequately funding and adopting a Housing First approach.
This diagram below illustrates a data‐sharing process, in which information collected by The People’s Project (on when and where clients were housed, housing type, wraparound support services, and outcomes such as retention and safety) is sent to the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) and the Social Wellbeing Agency (SWA). The diagram shows that once The People’s Project data is matched and anonymized, it can be compared and combined with government datasets—from the health, social development (MSD), justice, and tax/employment (IRD) sectors—to provide feedback to partner agencies and ultimately achieve better decision making and outcomes.
Phase One results of this research was published in the international journal SSM Population Health (Service usage by a New Zealand Housing First cohort prior to being housed, Vol 8, August 2019). The published research is available from science.direct.com.
The results debunked the myth that people who are homeless are hard to reach, because the majority (above 90%) of the 390 records were successfully linked to datasets in the IDI. The research also found people’s interactions with health and justice services progressively increased in the five to 15 years before they engaged with The People’s Project for assistance.
The latest research was published in April, 2024; Five-Year Post-Housing Outcomes for a Housing First Cohort in Aotearoa, New Zealand. This research found dramatic and continuing improvements for people housed by TPP, five years on.
Other published research includes Two-Year Post-Housing Outcomes for a Housing First Cohort in Aotearoa New Zealand (PDF) in the European Journal of Homelessness; and Post-Housing First outcomes amongst a cohort of formerly homeless youth in Aotearoa New Zealand in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand.
