2022 AHURI National Homelessness Conference helping shape solutions for better futures

The biennial 2022 National Homelessness Conference, convened by AHURI In partnership with Homelessness Australia, has wrapped up in Canberra, with 1050 delegates and 85 presenters across 22 sessions focussing on developing and shaping solutions for the terrible problems of homelessness in Australia.

The Conference ran from Monday 8 to Wednesday 10 August with sessions covering a wide range of topics and included key speakers such as The Hon Julie Collins MP, Federal Minister for Housing and Homelessness and The Hon Yvette Berry, Minister for Housing and Suburban Development (ACT Government).

Amongst the many highlights were the plenary sessions ‘Is the climate crisis an impending homelessness crisis?’ and ‘Ending homelessness for Indigenous Australians’; the international keynote address ‘Scotland’s Ending Homelessness Together Action Plan’; and the major sessions ‘Homeless in regional Australia’ and ‘The lived experience of not having a home.’

In the session ‘Is the climate crisis an impending homelessness crisis?, Andrew Crisp AM APM, the Victorian Emergency Management Commissioner, presented the impact of climate change on home owners living in areas vulnerable to being damaged or destroyed by climate change, and reflected that people who didn’t have insurance or were under insured are among a new category of homeless people. The extra costs of rebuilding with higher bushfire ratings and after extreme flood events means the new reality is that people building in such areas should first go to an insurance company and ask ‘will you insure my home in this location?’ before even applying for a building permit from the local government. If they can’t get insurance now, then they really can’t build on that site.

The speakers in the session ‘The lived experience of not having a home’ raised the awareness that good homelessness support service delivery requires working with and understanding the ongoing circumstances of homeless people, and this can often be brought into sharpest focus by peer support workers, people who have a lived experience of the complexities of being homeless. A key message is that support services need to recognise that people with lived experience bring a deep expertise to their roles.

In the session ‘Ending homelessness for Indigenous Australians’, Mr Shane Hamilton, Aboriginal Affairs NSW, powerfully articulated how the colonisation of Australia by European peoples is still occurring to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and how dispossession from cultural land and families leads to homelessness. In addition, racist segregation policies denied indigenous people access to education, health and wealth, which leads to Indigenous disadvantage and homelessness. 

The international keynote presentation by Margaret-Ann (Maggie) Brünjes, Chief Executive, Homelessness Network Scotland, and Marion Gibbs, Team Leader, Homelessness Unit, Scottish Government affirmed the importance of partnerships between levels of government in reducing homelessness, and how working together with homelessness and housing services and across services including health, education, social work, community support and justice can ensure that homelessness is only ever ‘rare, brief and non-recurrent’.

Poverty and inequality are the major cause of homelessness in Scotland. Maggie Brünjes put it very strongly: ‘It’s people being squeezed out of their communities and into a homelessness system…. Communities with healthy housing and labour markets will prevent homelessness.’

Many of the sessions were videoed and will be available to people who weren’t able to attend the Conference on the AHURI website in around two months’ time.