Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) — My question is directed to the Minister for Housing, Disability and Ageing, Mr Foley. Recently I held a roundtable discussion to gauge the views of organisations providing services to Victorians who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. It included representatives of Melbourne City Mission, Salvation Army, Launch Housing and the Women’s Property Initiatives. That discussion recognised that homelessness is not a standalone issue, with mental health and substance abuse being serious drivers and continuing concerns. We know that effective treatment plans start with accommodation. Melbourne is in desperate need of short-term accommodation facilities, so much so that organisations in the sector are spending millions of dollars on putting their clients up in hotels and the like just to meet demand. With vast tracts of land available to this government on the edges of our CBD and with a wide range of easy-to-erect, environmentally friendly short-term building solutions available, my question is: will the minister ensure that there are funds in the next state budget to identify suitable areas to build such facilities?
Ms Patten — On the point of order, President, Melbourne’s CBD is my constituency and the homeless people in the Melbourne CBD are my constituents. The organisations that I met with — Melbourne City Mission, Salvation Army, Launch Housing — are all within Northern Metropolitan Region, so I would say this is absolutely relevant to my constituents and my electorate.
ANSWER:
I thank the Member for her question and her genuine interest in these matters, as shown by her actions in bringing together sector leaders in a calm and mature way to consider how best to address the complex problem of homelessness.
The question correctly identified substance abuse and mental health concerns as significant drivers for many people’s homelessness, and called for funding in the 2017-18 Budget to address a shortage of crisis accommodation for Melbourne’s homeless.
I’m pleased to advise that only a few days after the question was asked the Andrews Labor Government was able to announce an unprecedented $109 million homelessness package to address these concerns. Highlights of the package include funding for new dedicated mental health accommodation facilities, new crisis accommodation facilities, and funding to enable our existing crisis accommodation facilities to move towards a therapeutic service delivery model.
We also know that crisis accommodation is not enough, and we need more dedicated, long-term housing so people can exit crisis accommodation. So I was pleased to add to our $109 million homelessness announcement with a further $185 million to upgrade our existing social housing estates and create at least a 10% uplift in units on each site, and also announce the first stage of a program to upgrade our existing underutilised assets in Melbourne’s Western suburbs, which will create up to 100 further additional social housing units.
Whether it is the Director of Housing’s assets, broader government assets or private land, the Andrews Labor Government is committed to doing what it can to build more social housing to address the problem of homelessness in Melbourne and Victoria.
