Longer term support needed for Australia’s homeless
A survey of 630 people using the Commonwealth and State-funded Supported Accommodation Assistance Program found that more than two-thirds of service users said they were close to feeling self-reliant, but found that the biggest barriers were a lack of money and accommodation.
The report found that 79% of the people surveyed had been homeless for at least a year, and nearly half had been homeless for five years or more, with 8% having spent up to 20 years homeless.
The Federal Housing Minister, Tanya Plibersek, said “that was a real worry and shows we’re not intervening early enough.
“We need to stop adding to the problem at one end. We’ve actually got to change some of the things that make the problem in the first place”.
The Council to Homeless Persons’ chief executive, Deb Tsorbaris, said the present program was “not at all” equipped to provide the long-term support needed to help people out of homelessness.
“We need flexible resources to work with people for as long as they need it. Re-fashioing the accommodation assistance program to do that would be fantastic”.
