Katharine leads on strategy and takes overall responsibility for the way the organisation is run. She came up with the idea of a socially responsible property guardian organisation while researching Britain’s wasted housing for her first book, FREE: Adventures on the Margins of a Wasteful Society (Ebury Press, 2010). She regularly comments on empty houses and related issues in the national media. She has worked as a journalist, writing for a wide range of publications including The Sunday Times and The Guardian. She now writes for The Pavement, a magazine for homeless people, on a voluntary basis, and is a trustee of Headway East London, a charity which supports survivors of brain injury.