Older Homelessness

Addressing the needs of the older homeless population
The prevention of homelessness in older people - Introduction

The Coalition on Older Homelessness Project (COHP) was a project based in Homeless Link's policy team. It worked to raise awareness of the specific needs of older homeless people and for improved services for this client group.

The COHP was supported by Help the Aged  and hact (Housing Associations Charitable Trust and received funding from Lloyds TSB charitable foundation. We ceased to be funded to do specialist work on older people in March 2010.

The last piece of work carried out by the Older Homeless Project was to produce resources that draw on the work of the project  as a resource for agencies that are working with older people and local authorities that are planning to address the needs of this marginalised client group.

Addressing the needs of Older Homeless people and preventing Homelessness in Older people

The two sets of guidance on our website are:

  1. Addressing the needs of older homeless people,  about tackling the needs of the current older homeless population and moving them on from hostels into more approriate long term housing and support/care. As part of this we have produced a toolkit for local authorities to use to audit their older homeless population in a specific local authority area. This will enable local authorities or groups of providers to find out about the numbers and needs of older homeless people in their services.  You can find out more or download the toolkit here.
  1. Preventing homelessness in older people,  raising awareness of  the fact  that insecurely housed older people can become homeless older people. It looks at the type of interventions that can help to prevent homelessness in older people.

Further Information

The Coalition has a website where facts and figures, project descriptions and publications relevant to the older homeless population can be found. This website is no longer being updated but it is a source of  some useful publications

Contact us

If you are interested in the work that the older Homeless project carried out  please contact Helen Mathie at Homeless Link. tel 0207 840 4411