We believe that housing is a human right. We know that homelessness and especially rough sleeping homelessness has devastating consequences on the health and wellbeing of those who experience it.
That’s why we’re working with our partners and the community to increase housing opportunities for people who are sleeping rough.
We’re aiming to reach ‘functional zero’ homelessness in the City of Port Phillip. This means that the number of people entering and experiencing rough sleeping within a month is less than the average six-monthly placement rate into long-term housing.
We know people experiencing homelessness have different needs. That’s why we implemented a ‘by-name list’.
The ‘by-name list’ is an up-to-date record of everyone we know to be sleeping rough, in their cars or in abandoned buildings (known as squats). This means we aim to know everyone by name so we can learn how to best support them and their housing needs.
Our approach is getting results. As of March, 37 per cent of people added to the list have now been housed. This puts Port Phillip Zero ahead of all other participating areas when it comes to positive housing outcomes.
We now have the lowest number of people sleeping rough since project started. The active number of people sleeping rough in our City is almost 60 percent lower than the peak of 129 in February 2021.
Port Phillip Zero is on course to meeting the goal of functional zero rough sleeping homelessness by Dec 2024. That means we would become the first large community with a by-name-list of over 100 people to achieve this goal.
For more: Port Phillip Zero – City of Port Phillip
