State Budget addresses soaring demand for homelessness support, with more needed for prevention

A near $600m in funding for homelessness support and $5.6b in social housing funds included in 
yesterday's State Budget announcement will go some way to relieve pressure from growing demand faced by 
homelessness support organisations such as Vinnies Queensland.

CEO Kevin Mercer welcomed funding of $209m for homelessness services, $366m for crisis 
accommodation and head leasing and more flexible access to social and affordable housing 
funding, saying last year’s record social housing build announcement needed to be partnered with 
immediate homelessness solutions.

“With the state housing waiting list recently exceeding the 50,000 Queenslanders mark, last year’s 
announcement of 53,500 social homes by 2044 is even more important to deliver in response to our 
housing crisis,” Mr Mercer said.

“What we need now is immediate solutions to help those experiencing or at-risk of homelessness 
while these homes are being built, and the State Budget includes some funding to support this.

“This issue remains critical – one of the missing pieces for Queensland right now is access to 
medium-term housing, for people moving between short-term crisis and long-term accommodation,
and a $5.6b investment into new social and community housing initiatives should help address that.”

Mr Mercer was encouraged by the continuation of cost-of-living support with the back-to-school 
boost and electricity rebate indexing, but there is still further opportunity to boost homelessness 
prevention by helping Queenslanders struggling with rising rent costs to maintain tenancies.

“Cost of living support is homelessness support – Queenslanders are feeling a lot of financial 
pressure in keeping up with rising rent and general costs of living,” he said.

“Sometimes a single rent increase can be enough for people to become at risk of losing their home.

“While we also appreciated numerous measures to support victims of domestic and family violence, 
the number one cause of homelessness for Australian women and children, there is an opportunity 
to invest in more preventative measures such as family and financial counselling services.”

Mr Mercer also acknowledged initiatives to invest in education and remove financial barriers of entry 
for primary school students, as well as reducing costs for Queenslanders to access medical 
services.

Vinnies Queensland, the state’s largest homelessness support provider, is currently working on 
building more than 500 social and affordable homes across Queensland for people in need, with the 
first site in this project – a 60-unit housing facility in Nerang on the Gold Coast – breaking ground 
earlier this month.

The organisation recently raised $2.5m for this project as part of its recent Vinnies CEO Sleepout 
event, which saw more than 550 Queensland leaders sleep out in support of homelessness.

In the last financial year, Vinnies Queensland provided more than 128,000 nights of accommodation 
and supported more than 1,300 Queenslanders experiencing homelessness to secure sustainable
housing.