FHA Commission Member Dame Louise Casey has been appointed for a life peerage in the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the UK Parliament. Dame Louise will sit with the “crossbench peers”, the non-party affiliated members of the Chamber.
The majority of members of the House of Lords are appointed by the Queen on the advice of the UK Government. Many of them come from academic, business, legal, media, government or charity backgrounds. The House of Lords complements the work of the elected House of Commons by holding the Government to account and amending laws.
Since May, Dame Louise Casey has been leading the UK Government’s taskforce on rough sleeping during the pandemic. More than 15,000 people were taken off the streets at the height of the pandemic in the UK and offered accommodation where they could self-isolate. Dame Louise has worked previously for the UK government as Homelessness Czar when she led a successful strategy to reduce the number of people sleeping rough on the streets.
Dame Louise is also Chair of our partner the Institute of Global Homelessness, and she has been a trustee of Depaul International. She played an important role in the Vincentian advocacy at the UN. During the 58th Commission for Social Development, she moderated some of the discussions that resulted in the UN adopting for the first time a resolution containing a description of homelessness and a call to member states to measure it.