Homelessness NSW

Join us for our next online Specialist Homelessness Service (SHS) Network Meeting. 📆 Thursday 14 November 2024  🕒 Time: 9.30am – 12.30pm  📍 Where: Virtual Why take the time to attend? ✔️ Connect & collaborate with your peers while sharing your insights and ideas to create a stronger, more supportive sector community. ✔️ Gain valuable knowledge and expertise, shares ideas about key issues for our sector, and explore new strategies & best practices. Click here to register: https://lnkd.in/gsfunMM4

Passionate about Housing First? Apply to join the Homelessness NSW Housing First Network! Our new Housing First Network aims to strengthen and advance Housing First practice, program design and systems change in NSW and extend the skills of Housing First champions.  💬 Who should apply?  The network is open to workers who have been engaged in delivering Housing First and Housing Led programs, workers who have incorporated Housing First Principles in their service delivery, and to Australian Housing First trainers located in NSW.  We’ve had a great response from our Together Home workforce, and we'd also like to include voices from homelessness workers who were involved in Housing First informed programs. This could be STEP, Sustaining Tenancies in Social Housing, Common Ground, or another program. 💬 What will the Network do?  Members will inform understanding of Housing First lessons learned through service delivery, and support Homelessness NSW’s efforts to integrate Housing First within homelessness systems. Meetings will be held quarterly (with the first one planned for late November 2024), and there will be additional opportunities to work on specific projects. Members are expected to attend all meetings.  Submit your Expression of Interest here: https://lnkd.in/gsDm9TDx 

The Homelessness Innovation Fund (HIF) is now live, with $100 million of funding on offer for NSW services ($30 million in the first round). If you work in the homelessness sector and have questions about the HIF - this event next week is your chance to ask them! Please join us on Wednesday 2 October at 10am for a facilitated Homelessness Innovation Fund Q&A session with sector experts Emma Nicholson (A/Executive Director at Homes NSW) and Kim Campbell (A/Director of Homelessness Strategy at Homes NSW). Join using this link on the day: https://lnkd.in/g_but_Ks #homelessness #qanda #homelessnessinnovationfund #homesnsw

Everybody's Home's Roadmap to Reform has turned their People's Commission into the Housing Crisis piece of work into a plan for all parties and candidates, ahead of the next Federal Election. The plan features four key elements: 1️⃣ Raising the rate of JobSeeker and income payments 2️⃣ Coordinating nationally consistent protections for renters: Limiting rent increases, requiring longer tenancy agreements, and introducing minimum living standards 3️⃣ Phasing in tax reform: Reducing the capital gains tax discount for investors over the next decade and phasing out negative gearing handouts 4️⃣ Implementing a broad-based social housing program: Expanding social housing each year, working up to a social housing target of 940,000 new homes within the next two decades, with the help of revenue savings from tax reform You can download and read the Roadmap here: https://lnkd.in/dxfZ6KUk What do you think of the Roadmap? #BuildSocialHousing #FairHousingFuture #EverybodysHome #Homelessness #HomelessnessNSW

Recent data collected by the Homelessness NSW team has revealed the areas in our state hit hardest by rising rents, demonstrating the reasons we urgently need greater investment in social housing. In only the past year, rents have gone up 9.1 percent in Greater Sydney and 5.2 percent in the rest of NSW. Sydney’s south-west - including the suburbs of Liverpool, Fairfield and Camden - suffered the biggest increase at 16.4 per cent. As people are priced out of these areas, they’re left with nowhere else to go, meaning we'll tragically see more sleeping in cars, tents and on the street. We're continuing to call on the NSW government to set a target of building enough social housing that it makes up one in 10 homes - up from just one in 20 today. The most recent NSW Budget is a welcome start, but with more than 56,000 people on the waitlist for social housing, we must build 5,000 new social homes each year to meet demand!   #homelessness #homelessnessNSW #housingcrisis #NSWGovernment

Homelessness NSW Senior Policy Officer Chris Hartley was recently out and about at the Hunter Homeless Connect Day, connecting with homelessness services, sector staff and local Green Council representatives in the area. With over 2,000 people seeking assistance at the event, it’s clear that there is an urgent need for more social housing and increased funding for support services in the Hunter region. Congratulations and well done to the organisers and many volunteers who made the Hunter Homeless Connect Day a great success! #hunterhomelessconnectday2024

Save the date 📅 Shifting the Dial to Prevent Homelessness What: An in-person event providing homelessness sector professionals with the opportunity to hear from leaders who are committed to preventing homelessness. Also, a great opportunity to exchange ideas and innovative practice through early intervention. When: 13 September 2024 1pm - 4pm AEST Where: The Theatrette, Parliament House, 6 Macquarie Street, Sydney Get your tickets now to hear our Homelessness NSW CEO Dom Rowe deliver a key message on the prevention of homelessness agenda, as well as these and more fantastic speakers: 🎤 The Hon. Rose Jackson, Minister for Housing and Homelessness 🎤 Caroline Gurney, Future Generation CEO 🎤 Rebecca Pinkstone, Homes NSW CEO 🎤 Kellie Dunn, Australasian Housing Institute CEO 🎤 Margaret Maljkovic. Link Wentworth CCO Find out more and register for your tickets here: https://lnkd.in/gbnpKHYm

Homelessness NSW team members Jessie Robinson and Sarah Luff recently visited the Dharriwaa Elders Group (DEG) of Walgett in Gamilaraay country.   Here they are with some of the DEG team in front of their new reverse osmosis community water fountain! A fantastic resource for a community that has experienced issues with water access due to the public supply in the area being high in sodium (particularly concerning for those living with chronic disease).   DEG also recently engaged Wiradjuri housing researcher and Masters of Architecture graduate Samantha Rich to progress the development of housing models that can respond to their community's priorities and local context, including supporting the diversion of young people from the justice system, crisis accommodation and Elders housing.   You can learn more about DEG and their fantastic advocacy work via their website: https://lnkd.in/gntzGytn   Thank you to the DEG team for having us visit!

We're calling on the NSW Government to sign up to national mandatory design standards that require new housing developments to offer basic accessibility. Almost all other states and territories have signed up to the design standards that simply require developers to build a step-free shower and level entry to houses. You can read the full standards here: https://lnkd.in/gvJHiJzx If it’s good enough for Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, ACT, Northern Territory and Queensland, surely NSW can step up and end housing discrimination! Visit https://lnkd.in/g9kXuAvk to sign the Open Letter to NSW State Leaders. @BetterHomesAus #CmonNSW #EndDiscriminatoryHousing #NSW #buildingbetterhomes #NationalConstructionCode #buildingministers #accessiblehousing #disability #peoplewithdisability

At the final plenary session of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) National Homelessness Conference on Kaurna land yesterday, Homelessness NSW CEO, Dom Rowe summed up the mood for change. “When you get in the room with the decision-makers, ask yourself are you at the table or are you on the menu?  This sector is currently on the menu and we need to use our power to sit at the table.” The theme of the conference was "Gathering Momentum". We are seeing positive momentum in the homelessness space, great initiatives are being discussed and recent budget announcements are a great first step. To really shift the dial on homelessness, we need to keep our advocacy strong. Significant additional investment is needed in social housing and support services. As a sector we need to build support across our communities to strengthen the momentum for change and convince State and Federal Treasury to invest seriously in this vital social infrastructure.