The London Housing Foundation (LHF) started life as the Central Young Men's Christian Housing Association Ltd, incorporated in 1911 as part of the YMCA movement. In its later years, the Central YMCA provided accommodation for single people in one of the three towers of the St Giles Hotel in Bloomsbury.
The cost of acquiring and refurbishing the St Giles Hotel had been arranged through bank loans and the input of a Housing Association Grant from the London Borough of Camden. However, the major recession in both business and property prices of the late 1980s eroded the profits and market value of the hotel. This led to financial difficulties and the Housing Corporation appointed a number of new Directors to the Association in 1989, including Simon Dow, then Chief Executive of Samuel Lewis Housing Trust (now Southern Housing Group) and Janet Sutherland, an officer of Camden Council.
In 1990 the name of the Central Young Men's Christian Housing Association Ltd. was changed to the London Housing Foundation. Day-to-day administrative and financial responsibility was contracted to Derek Joseph on behalf of housing consultants HACAS Ltd.
The hotel was sold in 1991, with 50% of the £15 million proceeds to be returned to the London Borough of Camden as repaid grant. Some of the £7.5 million was immediately used to help rehouse the former residents who would have been made homeless on sale. The remainder was placed in trust to meet the needs of single homeless people in London.
In 1991 Caroline Pickering was appointed as part-time Grants & Policy Adviser, a post she held until 2000. It was under her direction that the Foundation established itself as a respected grant-making charity. Innovative education and training programmes for managers of homelessness agencies were also commissioned. Kevin Ireland was Executive Director from 2000 to 2008 and oversaw the development of the IMPACT programme. This included the development of the hugely successful Outcomes Star; Beyond a Helpline – an innovative pilot to provide effective HR support to small homelessness agencies; and a range of leadership development programmes. In October 2008, the outcomes programme was transferred to Homeless Link for further development and dissemination.
In 2006, the Foundation employed Harmit Kambo as Programme Manager with responsibility to support homelessness agencies develop use of the private rented sector. The programme ended in late 2008 having established encouraging work in this area with a well-used website; a programme of seminars; and a number of reports. Harmit moved on from the Foundation in November 2008.
In 2008 Don Wood, the Chair of the Foundation, took over leadership of the organisation and oversaw a strategic review. From this grew
a new funding strategy, Transitions, the guiding principle of which is the
desire to support and enable both organisational and individual
transitions.