Tuesday, 20 June 2023

Preston electorate homelessness

Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (19:20): (228) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Housing, and the action I seek is for the minister to facilitate a meeting between the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, Launch Housing and Darebin City Council to discuss homelessness in Preston and Reservoir. Rough sleeping and other forms of homelessness are always important issues, but they are very much at the top of our local agenda at the moment. We are hearing about them from a lot of people. We are hearing about them from people who are facing real pressures finding rentals. We are hearing about them from our neighbourhood houses, who provide cost-of-living support and other services. We are hearing about them from some of our schools who support vulnerable families, and we are hearing about them from the police in some of the work that they do.

It is not easy to get hard numbers on rough sleeping and other forms of homelessness, but we are worried that there is a current upswing in our area, and with that in mind we would like to initiate a conversation specifically about the Melbourne Zero approach to ending homelessness, which is currently led by Launch Housing. It does build in some respects on the great work done by the Victorian Labor government during the pandemic, but the general idea of their program is that if you work quickly enough, you can ensure that more people are exiting homelessness than are coming into it, and that takes you to what people in the sector call ‘functional zero’. It is not quite the same as zero zero because you can never have nobody entering homelessness, but the idea is you have the smallest number, and as soon as people are homeless, you are supporting them to get into housing.

I understand that the current CEO of Darebin City Council Peter Smith has some very extensive experience in this area. He was at the City of Port Phillip when they undertook their Port Phillip Zero project, also with Launch Housing, and I understand he was also CEO at Adelaide City Council when they implemented their Adelaide Zero Project, from which the Melbourne projects take some inspiration. So we hope that if we get Peter, his officials, the mayor, the departments and Launch Housing – I suppose all of them – together, they can look at ways in which an expanded homelessness program at Darebin can do a number of important things. It can build on the current Darebin assertive community outreach program, which is run with the great teams at Merri Outreach Support Service. It could bring together a number of local organisations to coordinate their resources and support services, and it could establish some important tools that would ensure an evidenced-based approach to tracking and improving the effectiveness of services offered to those at risk of homelessness and those already homeless. Ultimately of course there will be questions of funding, but we think it is worth having the conversation to start with.

I know the minister is very passionate about addressing homelessness. The member for Broadmeadows already talked about some of his great work. We thank him for his consideration of this matter, which would help us greatly up in Preston and Reservoir, the cultural capitals of the north.