I’ve never seen so many rough sleepers: South Gippsland MP

South Gippsland MP Danny O’Brien remembers the first time someone told him there was a rough sleeper in Sale.

“It’s a really tragic situation [that] once upon a time you never saw in country towns,” he told the Gippsland Monitor. 

“In the 11 years I've been an MP there's been a massive increase in the number of actual rough sleepers in our country's communities, which was something that a decade or two ago you just did not see.”

New data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIWH) found across Victoria, 24,530 children received support from homelessness services in 2023-24.

This is the highest number of children who received support out of any Australian state or territory and has increased from 22,234 children in 2021-22.

The AIWH said in 2023–24, 4,462 children who presented for help in Victoria needed medium term housing, but 2,863 did not receive it.

Earlier this year research from the Foyer Foundation showed the Latrobe-Gippsland region was one of 20 in Australia where youth homelessness was on the rise.

Gippsland was at the top of the list with more than 1,000 young people experiencing homelessness.

The report found rates of high school completion in Gippsland were well below average, and that the region had a youth unemployment rate of almost 14 percent.

“The data reveals the magnitude and urgency of a problem that our current system cannot adequately address,” Homelessness Australia CEO Kate Colvin said in a statement. “If nothing changes, we will see more children and young people harmed, and dying, as a result.”

She said most children who are homeless without a parent or guardian “are fleeing homes where they have experienced violence, abandonment or neglect. They go from danger of one kind into danger of another”.

O’Brien urged the government to invest more money in services.