Tuesday, 4 February 2025

 Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (18:19): (1358) My adjournment matter this evening is for the Minister for Housing and Building. These statistics are frightening because at the end of these statistics are human beings. Rising by 60 per cent between the census, from 2016 to 2021, Gippsland homelessness rates have surged to a crisis proportion, and we are not alone. Exacerbated by a lack of available accommodation and housing options, housing affordability stress, the cost-of-living crisis and a shrinking rental market, a net loss of housing stock in our region, a lack of staffing resources for providers and the failure to deliver more social and affordable housing, homelessness in Gippsland now is everywhere. However, funding for Labor’s rough sleeping action plan lapses at the end of this financial year. Tents beside freeways and on banks of waterways, people sleeping under bridges, bus shelters and on park benches – and I do see it as I drive around; these are people in these places. A public rotunda serves as a makeshift home. These are daily occurrences for the rough sleepers – and not just individuals; there are families and there are children here. In 2023 the Morwell homelessness entry point recorded 123 people experiencing primary homelessness, 111 people in emergency accommodation and 84 living in rooming houses and caravan parks and the like. One catchment, one entry point. Extend that across our region and these are truly frightening statistics. The Regional Housing Fund stated that there were to be 110 houses for inner Gippsland and 65 for outer Gippsland – woefully inefficient – and these have not begun.

So what is the answer? It is service coordination and increasing housing supply. It is complex and varied: tackling mental health, tackling domestic violence and reducing crime in our regions. Supported by community networks, safety networks, our overstretched Victoria Police members and our local government, Gippsland is crying out for assertive outreach workers. These people engage with homeless people at their face: at the bus shelter and underneath the viaduct. They bring them into an entry point, start to assess them and give them hope. Gippsland Homelessness Network has identified a minimum of six outreach workers: two for Bass Coast, two for Latrobe Valley and two for East Gippsland. The action I seek is for the minister to continue the funding for the rough sleeping action plan well past this year, well past next year and into the future and ensure that six assertive outreach workers are funded to begin to meet the needs of vulnerable families and people in Gippsland.