Declare ‘homelessness emergency’ call as Minister admits system is failing
“I’ve never seen so many people sleeping under the cover of shop doorways, in park lands”. Drastic moves are underway as a new report finds the system is failing South Australians.
Adelaide City Councillor Phillip Martin wants a homelessness emergency declared over the number of people sleeping rough in the city, saying he “cannot recall an occasion in my life when I have seen so many people sleeping under the cover of shop doorways, in park lands”.
Latest numbers from the Adelaide Zero Project show just in the city of Adelaide there are between 200 and 240 people now sleeping rough every night, camping in the park lands, sleeping in doorways or seeking out shelters.
Figures do not account for homelessness throughout the rest of the state and come as the Adelaide Zero Project established in 2018 has long-missed its target to end rough sleeping in the inner city of Adelaide by 2025.
“There is no evidence of sustained progress to Functional Zero or a reduction in the underlying level of rough sleeping,” Adelaide City Council officers have reported.
“It is simply out of control… we need to find a solution and fast,” said Martin, saying he is planning to push for the council to declare a “homelessness emergency” in a bid to secure more funding to address the growing problem.
His call comes as Human Services Minister Katrine Hildyard admits the South Australian homelessness support system is not working, announcing last week there would be major overhaul after a recent widespread review showed “it did not deliver”.
The BetterStart Research independent review delivered to the state government found the current SA homeless support model – introduced by the former Marshall Liberal government in 2021 – has failed.
It also found that “funding was raised in every interview, focus group and survey undertaken as part of this review, not as a background influence but as a core determinant of how the homelessness system is currently functioning”.
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And the report found that South Australian homelessness funding was well below the national average.
“There are literally hundreds of people sleeping outside every night in the midst of what is one of the most affluent and curiously compassionate societies in Australia,” Martin said.
“If this isn’t a crisis, I don’t know what is. We have reached a point where we need to concede that whatever we’re doing is not working.”
SA homelessness funding has increased by around eight per cent since 2018, compared with a national average increase of 47 per cent over the same period, while the average cost per client has increased by approximately 20 per cent.
The increase in SA homelessness funding is the lowest of any state or territory, behind New South Wales at 13 per cent and lagging far behind the national leader – Queensland – at a 151 per cent increase.
Minister Hildyard last week announced the major review, telling InDaily that work on fixing the issue was just getting started and it was clear the old model was “introduced really quickly, and the evidence now shows that it was rushed”.
“We are really determined to advance reform that helps build a system that works for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness that focuses on prevention, and really supports the organisations who do brilliant work on supporting people through some of their most difficult times,” she said.
“This gives us the moment to absolutely focus on reform and to approach that reform with the sector, cross-government, with community and with those who have experience of homelessness.”
One “core recommendation” to extend current service contracts with support services for another year was accepted by the government “to give service workers and the people they support certainty and stability”, Hildyard said.
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“We want to take time to focus and look at what can work, what didn’t work, and what we need to do differently,” Hildyard said.
“We are not going to impose another model from the top down. We want to work really closely with homelessness services… to design together the next steps.”
But Australian Alliance to End Homelessness CEO David Pearson said the answers from the report were obvious.
“Blind Freddy could have told you that from the beginning,” he said.
“The problem is, a lot of homelessness services are delivered by voluntary services – the government can’t just move all of the pieces around on a chessboard.”
Pearson said the report was welcome, and that action to fix the broader system mattered, but there was a simpler solution: more funding.
But Pearson wanted faster action on the funding problem.
“This is a system that’s in urgent need of investment – people are dying,” he said.
“It’s a public health crisis on par with Covid. It couldn’t be less of a priority…in the way that funding has been ruled out as being one of the main things that this system needs.
“If they don’t invest more money in it, more people will die.”
Hildyard said the state government was already investing $91.5 million per year on homelessness services and recently added $6 million to the pool for Catherine House, Hutt Street Centre and St Vincent de Paul.
“Looking at funding on a per capita basis is a really simplistic way of looking at a very complex issue”, Hildyard said.
“We can see in jurisdictions here in Australia and in other parts of the world that additional funding hasn’t always meant that that problem has been solved,” she said.
“Solving this problem requires listening to people, really careful planning, evidence, and a clear understanding of where any investment will have the greatest impact for those people who most need our support.”
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