In July 2022, the City of Greater Dandenong and Launch Housing launched Dandenong Zero.

Dandenong Zero takes a place-based collective impact approach to reduce the numbers of people experiencing rough sleeping by connecting with and getting to know each person, and adding them to the local ‘By Name List’ to enable a focused client-centred service response. Knowing everyone by name, understanding their needs and providing an integrated service response helps people find and sustain housing.   

The project is underpinned by a strong network of local service providers who work together and share data to provide a truly client-centred approach and to help build trust with clients who have often been moved from service to service over their many years of homelessness.

Project goal

To achieve Functional Zero homelessness for people sleeping rough in the City of Greater Dandenong. This is when the number of people entering and experiencing rough sleeping homelessness within a month is less than the average monthly placement rate into long-term housing, or three. Once achieved it must be sustained and any future experiences of rough sleeping homelessness are brief, rare and once-off. This is because the housing and support resources required to end homelessness are efficiently coordinated and sufficient to meet the needs of all people who sleep and live in the municipality.

How are we going?

Homelessness is ended when people move into safe, sustainable, long-term housing of their choice. This includes public or community housing, private rental or private ownership that meets an acceptable minimum standard of a self-contained dwelling with its own kitchen and bathroom facilities. The person must have security of tenure evidenced by a signed tenancy agreement. This includes aged care and long-term special residential services.

The charts below illustrate the scale of rough sleeping homelessness in the City of Greater Dandenong. They show how people’s circumstances also change over time as they connect to the network of services in the project.

Sleeping rough and actively homeless

People are added onto the BNL when we meet them and they are sleeping rough. This means they are staying in an unsheltered living situation, a car or abandoned building or dwelling unfit for human habitation (eg a ‘squat’). When they are added they become ‘active’ on the BNL. This chart shows the ‘active’ number over time and since the project started.

Actively homeless and changes in living situations

Most people prefer not to sleep rough and these experiences are usually characterised by movement between different living situations as their circumstances change. The figure below shows this change over time as people connect to the network of services in the project. It shows that some people move into safer forms of sheltered emergency accommodation such as hotels, motels, or specialist crisis accommodations, or other forms of temporary housing including Transitional housing (THM) or Head Lease housing. They also move into community rooming houses or other forms of tenure but remain homelessness. These are not  final housing outcomes so people remain ‘active’ even though their living situations may have improved. People may live in these for several years before an offer of social housing is finally made.

The most important reason people stay on the list and don't move into safe and secure homes is that there simply aren't enough homes in Victoria that people on low incomes can afford. If 10 homes are available and 50 people need homes, 40 people are going to remain without a home, no matter how hard everyone tries to house them. Based on current estimates, in agreement with Council to Homeless Persons, we know that Victoria needs to build at least 6,000 homes every year for the next decade to meet current and expected future demand.

Partners

The Dandenong Zero project is being delivered in partnership with:

• Asylum Seeker Resource Centre
• Australian Community Support Organisation
• Avalon Housing
• Centre for Multicultural Youth
• City of Greater Dandenong
• Cornerstone
• ERMHA
• Launch Housing
• Monash Health
• Ngwala Willumbong
• The Salvation Army
• WAYSS
• Wintringham