Wednesday, 1 April 2026

 Chris CREWTHER (Mornington) (19:04): (1621) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Housing and Building. The action I seek is for the minister to provide an update on any crisis accommodation they plan to build on the peninsula and support they are giving for the 11 residents at risk of homelessness after the impending closure of the Mornington Peninsula’s crisis accommodation centre The Ranch.

The Ranch in Mornington has provided crisis accommodation for vulnerable locals for years, through the long-term temporary donation of the site and the work of Mornington Community Support Centre and many others. It is operated without government funding and now is set to close on 17 April for redevelopment. That means 11 people who have already experienced homelessness are staring down the possibility of ending up back in their cars, in tents, on the foreshore or elsewhere, amongst the hundreds of others already in that situation on the peninsula. There is nowhere obvious for these people to go. Ranch 2.0, the replacement crisis accommodation model set up by Mornington Community Support Centre on the peninsula, consists of just seven units and is already full. When The Ranch closes, the peninsula will lose a critical safety net in a community already under enormous pressure.

On any given night, the shire says that there are more than 100 people sleeping rough on the foreshore and in reserves. Now the Mornington Peninsula has more people sleeping rough than any other Victorian local government area. The latest data in January 2026 show that there were 138 people sleeping rough in tents, cars and foreshore reserves. This is happening in a region with approximately 1300 existing public housing dwellings but over 2600 people on the applicant waiting list. That is part of the 65,000 across Victoria who are on the waiting list for public housing and the more than 30,000 people who are on the priority waiting list. That is simply not good enough. We need more and more investment on the peninsula in public housing, crisis accommodation and more. We need more support for our community support centres like the peninsula’s three independently-funded support centres: the Community Support Frankston, which I note the member for Frankston looks after; Mornington Community Support Centre; Southern Peninsula Community Support and so many others. These centres are doing such great work but are feeling more and more pressure day by day, and locals are in effect being told to make do with less. This government’s response has simply not matched the scale of need on the ground. These are not just numbers. These are people with names, histories and nowhere else to go. The minister must do something to ensure that the Mornington Peninsula is not left with grossly inadequate crisis accommodation in the middle of a homelessness crisis. We need investment and we need investment now.