According to LeadWest* Melbourne’s west has recorded the highest homelessness demand in Australia.
Melbourne’s west has a homelessness rate that is 50 per cent higher than the national average.
LeadWest says that 15,025 people sought homelessness assistance in Melbourne’s west in 2024-25. Their analysis found Melbourne’s west lacks sufficient safe, secure and appropriate housing options to provide sustainable pathways out of homelessness.
This is not a supply problem. There are some 100,000 vacant homes in Melbourne — enough to house more than 250,000 people. What is more, in Footscray alone, instead of building more public housing, the state government plans to demolish the Gaskin Gardens public housing estate, and sell-off the old Footscray Hospital site to private developers.
At the same time as homelessness grows, the state government continues to outsource and privatise public housing, as well as health and other support services. Creating increasingly fragmented, insecure, unaffordable and overstretched systems.
The example of the Foley House closure by the Salvation Army demonstrates how little human care factors into these outsourced services. The need for supported housing simply doesn’t fit with services run by corporatised operators, so called non-for profits, who compete for inputs at market rates and rely on underpaid and volunteer labour.
*LeadWest is a local government advocacy alliance in Melbourne’s west, bringing together Brimbank, Hobsons Bay, Maribyrnong, Melton, and Wyndham councils.