Extra funding for homeless welcomed
Local
The State Government has announced funding of $6m over the next four years for Hutt St Centre, Catherine House and Vinnies to help address homelessness in the city and assist vulnerable South Australians into secure housing.
Prior to the election, Labor leader Peter Malinauskas criticised the decision by the previous Government to redirect funding away from the three agencies as part of a new tender arrangement for services for the homeless.
“We made a commitment to provide extra funds to these three organisations before the election and we’re now delivering on that,” the now Premier said.
“Because we cannot, in good conscience, stand idly by and allow hundreds of vulnerable people to sleep rough.
“These three organisations have years of experience playing crucial roles in responding to inner city homelessness.
“Specialist homelessness services not only help people to find secure housing, they also play a critical role in supporting people’s health, mental health, education and employment prospects.”
Mr Malinauskas said the Government would also invest $180m in delivering 400 new public housing homes and bring another 350 up to standard so they could provide shelter to families in need.
“We will also launch a maintenance blitz on a further 3000 homes to provide safe and suitable accommodation,” he said.
Hutt St Centre CEO Chris Burns said the decision was an “outstanding demonstration of the value-add each of the organisations contribute to the homelessness sector”.
The three organisations each lost approximately $1.2m per annum as part of the unsuccessful consortia for the SA Homelessness Alliances tender (CBD and South region).
The additional funding announced by the Premier will result in each organisation receiving $500,000 a year over the next four years.
“We’ll now start to work through how we best utilise the funding and work with the Alliances, Vinnies and Catherine House to better support our clients on their journeys to homefulness,” Mr Burns said.
Vinnies also welcomed the decision.
“We were delighted to hear that the State Government will commit $2m to the St Vincent de Paul Society (SA) over four years to build additional capacity in our homelessness services,” said Vinnies CEO Michelle Kemp.
“With our large network of volunteers working on the ground within local communities, we are uniquely placed to engage with people at risk of entering homelessness and this funding will enable us to invest in prevention programs to break the cycle.”
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