Effective supports and responses

The causes of homelessness are complex and its impacts play out differently for each individual. While providing housing and support are critical, people experiencing homelessness have different needs and circumstances.

We will ensure people experiencing homelessness have access to affordable housing and tailored, flexible support to meet their needs.

We will:

• Provide an additional 120 housing places for people sleeping rough across NSW, including 90 places in inner Sydney and a further 30 places in regional locations.
• Increase ‘core and cluster’ models for families experiencing domestic and family violence. These are sets of individual units in a single location together with office/workers’ spaces and communal areas for residents, giving women and children more privacy.
• Provide access to accommodation and education for young people through a purpose-built Youth Foyer in central Sydney. This will offer young people leaving out-of-home care a safe and affordable place to live while they engage in education, training and employment.
• Establish Staying Home Leaving Violence in five new sites. This is an initiative that aims to prevent homelessness by working with NSW Police to remove the perpetrator from the family home so that women and children can remain safely in the home.

NSW Government commitment to halve street homelessness by 2025

The NSW Homelessness Strategy 2018-23 recognises the important role of assertive outreach and access to quality health care in engaging with people who are sleeping rough, and helping them to connect with services and initiate an exit pathway out of homelessness.

In support of these initiatives under the Strategy, on 13 February 2019 the NSW Government nominated Sydney to join a global campaign of ‘Vanguard Cities’ to halve street homelessness across NSW by 2025. The Vanguard City campaign is helping 150 cities across the world work towards ending street homelessness by 2030 through sharing research, expertise and best practice.

The Vanguard City initiative will showcase the good work already happening in the City of Sydney area, and will support homelessness services to set goals, strengthen data collection and identify areas of improvement.

The Vanguard City campaign is led by the Institute of Global Homelessness (IGH). The IGH is a collaboration between DePaul University in Chicago, and Depaul International. In Sydney, IGH is working in partnership with the NSW Government and other organisations including:

• City of Sydney
• Mission Australia
• Neami National
• Salvation Army
• St Vincent de Paul
• St Vincent’s Health
• Wesley Mission
• Yfoundations.