Innisfree Housing Association was set up in 1985 by activists from another Irish community organisation – Brent Irish Advisory Service – who were seeing the effect of direct discrimination and difficulties experienced by the people they worked with of accessing decent, affordable housing.

They had the foresight to choose a long-term solution to those problems – start up an Irish Housing Association!

From those early days of providing short-life, shared housing, Innisfree grew to be able to acquire and develop new homes and provide a range of services to our residents. We were registered as a housing association with the Housing Corporation (the sector regulator at the time) in 1988 and were able to open our first new general needs homes at Innisfree House, Willesden in 1990.

We continue to work actively within the wider Irish communities and over half of our residents are from an Irish background. However, our homes and services are available to the diverse community of Londoners.

Drawing on the experience of the Irish communities coming to London, we know how important a welcome is and we aim to provide that welcome to people from far and near.

To celebrate our 25th anniversary in 2010 a commemorative publication was produced. It can be read here.