News

A recent AHURI report, ‘Safe and sound? How funding mix affects homelessness support for Indigenous Australians’, has found that no Federal or State government program specifically targets supporting homeless Indigenous Australians or those at risk of experiencing homelessness, despite their being significantly over represented in the homeless population.

AHURI’s professional services team has been commissioned to evaluate a pilot project that provides a mobile sustainable tenancy service for young people aged 16 to 25. The pilot program, which started in August 2016 and is to run for an initial 18 month period, is being conducted by Brisbane Youth Services with support from the Queensland Government Department of Housing and Public Works.

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.

Federal, State and Territory Treasurers have endorsed a recommendation to establish an expert taskforce to design a bond aggregator model and to report to Heads of Treasuries by mid-2017.

State and Territory Ministers agreed to continue support for the National Housing Research Program conducted by AHURI at a meeting of Housing and Homelessness Ministers held in early November.