Legislative Council Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2) 54 2 Parliament of South Australia Legislative Council published Question Time Homelessness Homelessness The Hon. I. PNEVMATIKOS Legislative Council Homelessness The Hon. I. PNEVMATIKOS (15:06): How does not spending funds prevent homelessness? The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK Legislative Council Minister for Human Services Homelessness The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (15:06): We already spend $70 million in South Australia every single year on 20,000 clients per annum, and on the measures homelessness is actually not increasing in South Australia. What has been happening is that clients go through repeated cycles. There could have been one option taken which could have been to do what they do with the NDIS, which is to provide the funds to the client. They might determine that they wanted to spend that significant funding which goes into the system themselves on services that would assist them, but we have worked together through the alliance process. That tender closed last week. We are very excited about what the services are going to look like into the future. The Homelessness Prevention Fund was really not designed to address additional homelessness because homelessness, from all the metrics, has not increased. We saw an increase last year due to COVID, but we are not experiencing homelessness in South Australia increasing across the board.