By George Hatvani.

In 2001, I set off on my first shift as a homelessness outreach worker in Collingwood. In those days many of the people we worked with were struggling with long-term mental illness. A number of big psychiatric institutions had closed, and there were lots of vulnerable people on the streets; stood-over, assaulted. They were free, but they were not safe. They had lost the accommodation and community they’d once had. 

That was nearly 30 years ago, and something that’s remained stubbornly persistent since is the conflation of homelessness with criminality. This misrepresentation is not only inaccurate, it’s harmful. It distorts the lived realities of people experiencing homelessness and it drives policies that worsen their circumstances.  

In recent months this punitive discourse has become louder

Sometimes it’s subtle: Following the mass stabbing at a Bondi Junction shopping center last year some media reports dwelled on the perpetrator's stints sleeping rough – it was almost as if that answered the riddle of why someone would carry out such a heinous act. Sometimes it’s more direct: Such as in Queensland where people sleeping rough are aggressively moved on by council rangers following an amendment to local laws that effectively banned homelessness. 

Here in Melbourne, the misattribution has increasingly been linked to perceptions of safety on our streets. Earlier this year, after a St. Kilda community rally about a rise in crime and anti-social behavior, ABC Radio listeners were asked if they’ve felt unsafe there or anywhere in Melbourne. Callers quickly blamed people experiencing homelessness. One business owner from Prahran described daily thefts, with the perpetrators back on the streets the next day. “These homeless people. They’re horrible. They’re running rampant. They’re crazy.” 

While criminal behavior requires a law enforcement response to ensure community safety, homelessness is not a crime. People experiencing homelessness are suffering the harshest impacts of a housing crisis which is forcing more people into public spaces, simply because they have nowhere else to go.  

And here the problem starts as the visibility of homelessness often provokes discomfort. This leads to reactive policies that prioritize moving people along rather than providing necessary support, or potentially criminalizes them by issuing fines, clogging up our court system. These methods often operate under the guise of "cleaning up" public spaces. They displace and provoke those in need and do nothing to address the root causes of homelessness. 

People forced to sleep rough on the street are not problems to be removed; they are members of our community who need our support. Their presence reflects multiple systemic failures, not personal choices. Homelessness is the end result of policy decisions made over the last 50 years including those related to public housing, family violence, mental illness, disabilities, drugs, crime and imprisonment.  

The good news is that proven solutions exist

Evidence-based approaches such as 'Housing First' and the 'Advance to Zero' approach demonstrate that homelessness can be ended through the provision of safe, affordable housing combined with necessary support services. These models work by prioritizing stable housing without preconditions and coordinating services to meet the real-time needs of the individual human being experiencing homelessness.  

The City of Port Phillip was the first community in Melbourne to sign up to the Zero approach in 2019. While other communities can only measure the scale of rough sleeping using anecdotes or outdated census figures, Port Phillip can speak with relative certainty about the number of people who are currently sleeping rough on the streets.

And the truth is that the number of people sleeping rough has significantly decreased. As we can see from the data below, it has fallen from 134 in 2011 to 91 in the 2018 Street Count, and today there are less than 40 people sleeping rough on any given night.  

In 2016, the City of Melbourne identified that almost 250 people were sleeping rough. Today, there are less than 100. Nearly 300 people have been securely and affordably housed since the project started using a By-Name List in 2020.  

The City of Stonnington, which includes Malvern, Prahran and Toorak is on track, possibly by the end of 2025, to become Australia’s first community to achieve and sustain ‘functional zero’ rough sleeping homelessness, which is when 3 or less people sleeping rough remain homeless.  

The benefits of ending homelessness will be significant

Studies consistently show that the benefits of stable housing and appropriate supports significantly outweighs the dollars spent providing it — reducing costs to emergency services, improving public health outcomes, and strengthening community wellbeing. To achieve this requires empathy, political will, and a bi-partisan commitment across all layers of Government driven by the ambitious hopes of its citizens, not the marginalization and stigma that is currently pervading our public discourse.  

All of us who live in Melbourne have a right to feel safe on our streets, in our businesses and in our homes and every Melbournian deserves to have a home to sleep safely in at night.  

George Hatvani has worked in homelessness in Melbourne for nearly 30 years, as an outreach worker, manager of programs, researcher and advocate. He is currently head of Systems Change and Advocacy at Launch Housing. 

Add your voice to the Melbourne Zero campaign, be part of positive change today. We’re making Melbourne a world-leading city in ending homelessness, starting with ending rough sleeping by 2030.