AHURI homelessness services report for Ministers released

The AHURI report, ‘Effectiveness of the homelessness services system’, written for the Housing Ministers meeting in November has been released and is available for download on the AHURI website.

The AHURI report presents a number of findings including that demand for specialist homelessness services is much higher than the capacity of the system to deliver. However, clients who do access specialist homelessness services are more likely to be housed and have a reduced use of government services, particularly health and justice, which result in cost savings to government. In addition, specialist homelessness services have a modest impact on improving clients’ education, training and employment outcomes

... demand for specialist homelessness services is much higher than the capacity of the system to deliver.

The report identified one of the biggest problems within the sector is that the available data is often limited, fragmented or not comparable, which makes effective analysis difficult. The report recognises a strong need for a whole-of-government approach to collecting and managing data from specialist homelessness services as well as in the evaluation of services.

The report identifies that each state and territory has their own independent homelessness system. It is, therefore, inappropriate to think in terms of an integrated ‘Australian homelessness system’. Although national agreements and contractual arrangements between the Commonwealth and the states and territories frame the homelessness system, they do not represent an overarching vision and there is no national plan to address homelessness that takes structural drivers into account.