In December 2024, Mornington Peninsula Shire council in partnership with the neighbouring Frankston Zero project, Launch Housing and project partners, proudly launched Mornington Peninsula Zero.

This initiative takes a place-based collective impact approach to significantly reduce rough sleeping within the region by connecting directly with people sleeping rough and enrolling them onto the local ‘By Name List’ (BNL). This is the foundation that allows for a tailored, client-centred service response. 

Project goals 

The goal of Mornington Peninsula Zero is to achieve Functional Zero homelessness. This will be reached 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 in Mornington Peninsula Shire are brief, rare and once-off. This will be when 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 Shire.

How are we going? 

The latest data from the BNL illustrates the scale of rough sleeping homelessness in the Mornington Peninsula Shire. It also shows how people’s circumstances change over time as they connect to the services in the project. The data shows clearly the change in living situations over time as people travel on a pathway out of homelessness.

Sleeping rough and actively homeless   

People are added onto the BNL when we meet them and they are sleeping rough. This means that they are in an unsheltered living situation, a car or  an 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 since the project started. By showing the number of people who remain sleeping rough we can see that people connected to the project gradually move into different living situations.

Actively homeless and changes in living situations 

Most people prefer not to sleep rough and move between different living situations as their circumstances change. The figure below shows this change over time as people connect to the services in the project. The chart shows that some people move into safer forms of sheltered emergency accommodation such as hotels, motels, or specialist crisis accommodations, or into other forms of temporary housing including Transitional housing (THM) or Head Lease housing. They also move into community rooming houses and other forms of living with others which may have greater security of tenure but remain forms of homelessness. These are not their final housing outcomes and for that reason people remain ‘active’ even though their living situations may have improved. People could 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 and 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

Mornington Peninsula Zero is spearheaded by the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council and Launch Housing. Partners in the project include:  

• Southern Peninsula Community Support 
• The Salvation Army
• Peninsula Health 
• Wintringham 
• Peninsula Community Legal Centre  
• Mornington Community Support Centre 
• Bolton Clarke 
• Westernport Community Support Service 
• Lighthouse Foundation

Enabling partners:

• Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH)
• Homes Victoria
• Department of Justice and Community Safety (DoJ)

• Andrew McDougall & Frances Ilyine Foundation  
• Ballarat Foundation
• Collier Charitable Trust
• Creswick Woolen Mills (300 Blankets)
• Erdi Foundation
• Percy Baxter Charitable Trust 
• The Blueshore Charitable Trust 
• The Bowden Marstan Foundation 
• The Jack Brockoff Foundation
• William Angliss Charitable Fund
• Many generous individual donors