The Hope Six Demolition Project

Harvey wrote the songs, and her poetry book The Hollow of the Hand, while travelling to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington, D.C. with Seamus Murphy between 2011 and 2014. The title refers to the HOPE VI program, under which run-down public housing in the United States was demolished. A tour of Washington given by Paul Schwartzman of The Washington Post shaped the opening song, The Community of Hope.

The album was recorded in public 45-minute sessions behind one-way glass at Somerset House in London, as part of an installation called Recording in Progress, commissioned and presented by Artangel and Somerset House. Phones were confiscated at the door, and at the first viewing Harvey was working on Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln. The Wheel was premiered on BBC 6 Music on 21 January 2016, The Community of Hope followed on 10 March, and The Orange Monkey was the third single on 7 April. Murphy directed the videos.

It reached number one in the UK with 11,436 copies, her first, then fell 22 places in its second week. It reached 63 in the US, and Metacritic scores it 79. Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune said it builds masterfully to a powerful closing one-two punch, and Mojo and Uncut placed it ninth and sixth among the albums of 2016. It was nominated for the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album. Candidates for a council seat in Ward 7 in Washington criticised The Community of Hope, and Laura Snapes of Pitchfork asked whether pointing out problems without proposing solutions left her as responsible as the powers that came before. A demos collection followed on 11 March 2022. Seamus Murphy directed the documentary A Dog Called Money, shown at the Berlinale in 2019.