In January the LHF, in partnership with Homeless Link, launched the Atlas, an interactive tool to provide a unique overview of homelessness services across London. The Atlas is six months old today and we asked Project Lead Becky Rice to give us an update.

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Following the launch of the LHF Atlas of homelessness services in January, and a very positive response from the sector, we are pleased to announce new data in the live Atlas today, exciting forthcoming developments and a request for user feedback.

Six months in we have already updated the Atlas with new rough sleeping figures from official counts and estimates data from MHCLG and, from today, the new annual CHAIN figures which highlight the number of people who have been contacted by outreach teams while sleeping rough, across a whole year.

The use of Tableau technology has been pivotal to the LHF transforming a static document – which quickly became outdated – with a more interactive and flexible format. We encourage all feedback and comments and are able to respond to any ideas for corrections or updates very quickly. Feedback can be sent to Gareth Thomas Information Manager at Homeless Link or Becky Rice, the Atlas lead for the London Housing Foundation.*

In its first four months there were more than 750 unique users of the LHF Atlas site. The most popular visualisations to date are the London map and borough focus tools. Demonstrations at high profile forums across London have engaged more than 50 key sector colleagues with the product.

The Atlas presents data which has not been mapped in this way before. This includes data that is new to the public, enabling people to find out more about:

• where the innovative Housing First model is being adopted in London
• whether a local authority is commissioning street outreach services for rough sleepers
• information about the contribution that winter shelters make in providing emergency short term accommodation to those in dire need
• the volume of accommodation spaces in hostels and supported housing targeted specifically for those without dependent children who are facing homelessness.

We are excited to announce that the 2020 refresh of the Atlas will include a new map of specialist health services in London; we hope this will make the Atlas of increasing use to front line workers as well the original target audience of researchers, policy makers, and those working in business development and strategy. The refresh will also enable users to identify services that are women/ men only and those specifically for young people.

The LHF and Homeless Link encourage anyone who is a current or potential user of the Atlas to complete a very short survey to help us continue to develop and improve the product:
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/ATLAS_stakeholders2019

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To access the Atlas visit www.lhfatlas.org.uk
*To contact the team visit the “contact” page on the Atlas HERE or tweet @rice_becky
You can find out more about Homeless Link at https://www.homeless.org.uk/