Tuesday, 12 August, 2025
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A Star News Group Publication
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All part of solution By Mikayla van Loon The first week of August each year marks Homelessness Week. A time for services and organisations to come together and advocate for change to house the country’s most vulnerable. But this year, with a theme of Homelessness Action Now, outer eastern services echoed the need for impactful change as more and more people fall through the cracks and into housing stress. Anchor Community Care chief executive officer Heidi Tucker said homelessness is starting to affect sections of the community that would have normally been spared from rental or mortgage stress. “(Services) are just seeing more and more crises and having people coming in where two people are working, and we’ve never seen that before,” she said. Compounding this is an overwhelmed sector of support workers becoming “incredibly pressurised” by the growing demand. That’s why on Tuesday 5 August, the Eastern Homelessness Network (EHN) organised the Homeward Bound Walk at Ringwood Lake to connect and engage leading support services and their frontline workers in conversations but also as a celebration of the work they do and continue to do across the outer eastern suburbs. The walk also linked with the Victorian Homelessness Network’s Houses at Parliament Campaign, calling on the State and Federal governments to support the construction of 60,000 social and community houses. “Homelessness is not inevitable. With enough public and community homes and the right support, everyone in the community can be permanently housed,” EHN coordinator Jo McDonald said. As women and children emerge as one of the largest cohorts to find themselves without a home, Council to Homeless Persons chief executive officer Deborah Di Natale said sadly it’s taking northwards of 18 months for that woman and child to find secure housing. Ms Di Natale said over the course of many years, not much has changed in terms of advocacy but that needs to change. “I just want us to all get together to solve it…I feel confident and optimistic that we’re going to be able to make change.” For more, turn to pages 4 and 5
OF FUN S D A O L BUS
Eastern Homelessness Network coordinator Jo McDonald and Council to Homeless Persons chief executive officer Deborah Di Natale at the Homeward Bound Walk. (Mikayla van Loon: 494773)
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