#57 - Rami Alrudaini - Housing First - Collective impact, lived experience and the infrastructure that makes Housing First work at scale to tackle homelessness.

In this episode, we meet Rami Alrudaini, Programme Manager at Housing First Auckland — the backbone organisation coordinating collective impact across Housing First providers in Tāmaki Makaurau AucklandRami's family fled war in Iraq before he was born. Social justice was instilled in him before he had a word for it. He came into the homelessness sector from mental health, where he first witnessed people with complex needs being systematically denied access to housing, and has spent his career since building the systems and infrastructure to prevent that from happening. In this episode, Rami talks about what a backbone organisation actually does — the connective tissue that holds a collaborative together, largely invisible to the public but essential to everything else working. He talks about the National Homelessness Data Project, what it is finding, and why welfare conditionality is showing up in the data as a direct pipeline into homelessness. He talks about the national lived experience community of practice, and why the demand for it is coming not just from people with lived experience but from organisational leaders who recognise its value. And he talks about Finland — how one country reduced homelessness by 80% over forty years through four things: good data, prevention, Housing First as a philosophy not a contract, and building houses. His conclusion is simple. It is not rocket science. What is missing is the political will. We'd like to thank Rami for taking the time to speak with us for this episode.And don't forget to subscribe to the CHA Hub Podcast — wherever you get your podcasts from.The CHA Hub Podcast is sponsored by our Founding Partner, Westpac New Zealand.