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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-09-24 Daily Xml
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Homelessness Services

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (14:51): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Human Services a question regarding the Glasgow model for homelessness reform.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY: Today's Advertiser has an article about the government's homelessness reforms. It says:

The government says it is funding about 75 separate homelessness programs in South Australia delivered by more than 30 organisations, creating a confusing web for people in crisis.

In contrast, the CEO of the Hutt St Centre said on radio today, 'The greatest demand is a shortage of housing for people to flow through to out of homelessness', and, 'We all work very well together quite collaboratively.' My questions to the minister are:

1. Given the minister's criticism of the number of services and organisations, exactly which services and providers does the minister think should close down?

2. Why is the minister building and selling homes for $400,000 each when the sector is telling us that we need more social housing?

3. Why is the minister rushing this reform through when the $20 million Homelessness Prevention Fund tender closed in June but still hasn't been announced?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:53): I am not sure I've got enough time to answer this question; it might depend on how much leeway you give me, Mr President. There is a lot to unpack in that question—a lot of which was actually factually incorrect.

Since we came to government, we have been on the journey for homelessness reform for a very long time. We have consulted widely with the sector, and they will tell you that the system is broken. The contracts for homelessness services were rolled over and rolled over and rolled over, and what we are seeing with people experiencing homelessness is not that the overall numbers of people are increasing but that the people experiencing some form of homelessness experience it for longer and cycle back into the system. Clearly, that says something is not working.

The sector itself will say the system is broken and we have been working closely with it through a range of different mechanisms. In terms of consultation, we have a homelessness sector reform group, which has been guiding this document that we have just released today, and it is clearly supportive of the reforms.

I just remind everybody about why we have homelessness services: it is because it is the person who has the experience whom we need to serve. That is the primary purpose of funding services. What they also tell us, and there are quotes in the public document of which people can avail themselves, is that it is not working for them. I have spoken to people who have told me some pretty absurd stories, like, 'I went to a particular service and I was turned away because I wasn't their cohort.'

We need to have an approach where we have what is referred to as a 'single door'. A number of people, particularly if they are experiencing rough sleeping, might not have ID and might not have a phone, so for them to turn up to a service and be told, 'You have come to the wrong service,' is completely absurd. We need to reorient the service so that it is about the individual whose circumstances must be considered—their individual circumstances.

What we want to move towards is what is called a housing-first approach. What we have seen work successfully through the COVID experience is that the services have collaborated much better than they have in the past in terms of providing exit points. Also, when people were in the hotel system, the support services, case management, mental health and drug and alcohol services were able to know where that person was because they had a fixed address, so they have had much more success in stabilising people and assisting them through their journey back to doing all the things that the rest of us take for granted. That is where we want to go.

The way these services are funded at the moment is something you will often hear criticised by the community sector in that they need to compete. The government sets the priority and sets the parameters, organisations fit those particular parameters and that particular tender document, and then they all go and do their separate thing. Sometimes, the KPI can be about referring someone who has one particular issue to another service. We want to focus on outcomes. What we are interested in is actually getting people off the street and providing them with the services they need at the point in time that they need them.

We also believe that there needs to be a much greater focus on using the private rental sector. Not everybody is able to be housed in the public housing sector—that is just reality. There is going to be much more of that going forward. Particularly if it is managed, we think that that is much more feasible. It is about actually providing the service to the person at the point at which they need it—a roof over their head, stability, the services that wrap around them and going on that journey.

We have particular beds and services in the system that are tagged for a particular cohort, which means that they are not accessible to other people. There are a whole lot of things in the system which, from an overall point of view, don't make sense. The alliance model is going to assist services to work together and to have much more flexibility internally, within their alliance, on how they manage those allocations. Rather than a competitive approach, it will be much more collaborative.

I have also noted the occasional criticism from some in relation to the Affordable Homes Program. We believe that we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We have also looked at the system from a system point of view. We want to shift it from the crisis end. With the gracious benevolence of our Treasurer, the SA Housing Authority received four years' worth of funding up-front, which means we have working capital. We might as well put it to work to deal with an area that has been sadly neglected in South Australia, with these 46,000 people who are in housing stress of some form or another. They welcome the advent of affordable homes.

If anybody looks at the Affordable Homes website, they can see that there are houses that are priced very modestly. I think I saw one quite recently that was less than $200,000, which puts it in the price bracket for people on quite modest incomes. There has never been a better time to buy, in our generation, than at the moment. If we can take the pressure off the people who may fall into homelessness—prevention, which we know is much cheaper than having to assist people through that process—then we will not just save them the trauma of their experience but they will have much better outcomes.

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Mr Wortley has a supplementary.

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