House of Assembly Fifty-Third Parliament, First Session (53-1) 53 1 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Question Time Homeless Figures Homeless Figures Ms SANDERSON House of Assembly Adelaide Homeless Figures Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (15:05): My question is to the Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion. How many South Australians are considered to be homeless? The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON House of Assembly Ramsay Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion Minister for Social Housing Minister for Multicultural Affairs Minister for Ageing Minister for Youth Minister for Volunteers Homeless Figures The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay—Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion, Minister for Social Housing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Youth, Minister for Volunteers) (15:05): We take homelessness very seriously, and we have quite a strong record here, under this government, from our 'stepping down' report to our facilities like UNO and Common Ground. The key thing about homelessness is that it's not just about putting a roof over someone's head: it's about providing the support services for those people. What we do is look at the 'sleeping rough' report. If I am correct, we indicated in February that there are about 72 people in the Adelaide city area who identify as homeless—that's a figure that I have—and that's down from about 120 people who identified back about five or six years ago. However, I think we should be very, very clear about homelessness, and I spoke about this in the house previously. We have seen that the federal government has decided not to continue with a national partnership on homelessness. Homelessness might involve people who are experiencing living with family and might be escaping domestic violence. They might be someone who is couch surfing. So, while we try our very best to identify exactly the numbers, sometimes it's very hard to identify people. What that means is it's really important that we support our gateway services in homelessness, to understand people who might be at risk of homelessness. Obviously, one of the key things of government is that it's best to support people before they find themselves homeless, so that's where the important work of our domestic violence services, our youth services and also our public housing and social housing system are really, really important to support families when they may be at risk of homelessness.