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Housing First: Evidence, Economics, and the Case Against Housing as Commodity

A. C. Applebee, L. N. Combe · 2026

Abstract

Homelessness persists across developed nations not because effective solutions are unknown, but because political ideology, moral intuition, and the financialisation of housing routinely override empirical evidence in policy design. This paper examines three interconnected failures: the persistence of the staircase (treatment-first) model despite four decades of evidence documenting its 80-90% failure rate; the refusal to adopt Housing First despite consistent evidence of 80-90% tenancy retention, cost savings of EUR 15,000 per person per year, and successful national-scale implementation in Finland; and the structural production of housing insecurity through foreign investment, negative gearing, and the treatment of residential property as a speculative asset class. Drawing on Finland’s national Housing First strategy (2008-present), the United States Pathways to Housing program, Canada’s At Home/Chez Soi randomised controlled trial (N=2,148), and implementations across Europe, the paper documents that Housing First works better, costs less, and produces superior outcomes on every measured dimension. It then extends the analysis to the Australian housing crisis, where 1.04 million dwellings sit vacant while 122,000 people experience homelessness — an 8.5:1 ratio that makes the word “shortage” a policy fiction.

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