The Victorian government will send two new outreach teams into Gippsland streets to connect rough sleepers with housing and healthcare, but homelessness services say a recent commitment of 100 new homes is nowhere near enough to meet the region's need.

More houses needed: The rate of people accessing homelessness services in Gippsland is more than double the national average, according to the GHN.

The new policies aimed at combatting that range from collecting information on the services each individual experiencing homelessness requires to housing targets for housing more young people. 

Alongside this, the state government has also committed to the construction of 100 new homes in the region.

Gippsland Homelessness Network (GHN) Coordinator Chris McNamara told the Monitor the new policies will be a welcome addition to the region, which has some of the worst rates of rough sleepers in the country.

However, just shy of 600 people entered GHN’s entry points seeking housing in 2025-26, a figure that vastly overshadows the state’s new home contribution. McNamara was supportive of the announcements but described the commitment as “not enough”.

Still, she added the new housing and outreach workers will help the growing crisis and called on the Victorian Coalition to support the plan.

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The data: Research Fellow in Healthy Housing at the University of Melbourne, Dr Erika Martino, told the Monitor that although the policies are on the right track they didn’t go far enough.

“Outreach is only as effective as the housing it connects people to,” she said.

Martino said Australia needs to avoid drifting back towards a “staircase” model of providing homeless accommodation, where people have to prove they are “housing ready” by moving through crisis and transitional accommodation before being offered a permanent home.

She said that there was strong international evidence showing the best outcomes come from combining high levels of support with housing that doesn’t depend on people first meeting behavioural conditions.

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What are the new policies? The new policies have three key elements. 

One: Assertive outreach

In Gippsland, there will be two new teams of two full-time workers based in Latrobe and Bairnsdale that will be actively talking to rough sleepers about what their needs are.

“They will engage people and support them where they're living at that time,” said McNamara. “They can make sure they've got the things that they need, whether it’s clothes or medication.”

Workers can also encourage applications to the Victorian Housing Register, which will help get the ball moving on providing accommodation.

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Two: Establishing needs

By going out and talking to people on the street, outreach workers will be able to better understand the scale of rough sleeping in a town and identify what each individual needs in terms of services and care.

Normally, McNamara said homelessness services are waiting for rough sleepers to appear at entry points before they can identify their problems. 

This new plan gives organisations the opportunity to prevent harmful situations from getting worse because outreach workers can identify problems on the street.

Three: More homes 

The state government’s 100 new homes to house people who are experiencing persistent homelessness also includes an additional 88 new transitional crisis homes for people in times of stress.

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