Sabra Lane: Every day, hundreds of calls for help to early intervention homelessness services are going unanswered. Many can't even get in the system until they're already sleeping rough. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has published new figures today showing the majority of those asking for help are women and children. Angus Randall reports.
Angus Randall: In the Northern Territory, Mission Australia provides emergency relief like food, clothing and counselling, not housing. But regional leader Dr Paul Royce says more people than ever are asking for help to keep a roof over their head.
Paul Royce: People are now coming to us saying we can't pay the rent, we don't have enough money to pay the electricity. We're actually seeing working people now coming in to access our services.
Angus Randall: Figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show every day specialist homelessness services across the country are receiving around 350 requests for help they can't meet. With so many being turned away, people are not actually getting help until they're already homeless. Kate Colvin is the CEO of Homelessness Australia.
Kate Colvin: The number of staff hours just runs out. There's just not enough people to go around everyone who needs help. And one of the outcomes of that is that people then end up not seeking help until they're just at the most desperate point of need.
Angus Randall: Nearly four in five of those pleased for help come from women and children, many of whom are fleeing family violence.
Kate Colvin: This is ordinary families that just can't keep up with the rent and are squeezed out of the rental market into homelessness. But also it's about domestic and family violence because 40% of everyone being assisted by homeless services has experienced domestic and family violence.
Angus Randall: Kate Colvin says it's much harder and more expensive to help someone who's already homeless compared to when they were at risk of homelessness.
Kate Colvin: When someone comes to a homelessness service at risk of homelessness, services are able to prevent them becoming homeless in more than 80% of cases. But the problem is when people come to a service having already lost their home, there's not the social housing or accommodation available to help everyone.
Angus Randall: Homelessness Australia is calling for a national homelessness prevention fund that can step in before this happens. The proposed fund would pay for extra homelessness prevention staff and offer some small-scale financial assistance.
Kate Colvin: That would mean that when you go to a homelessness service, there's someone there with the sort of tenancy expertise, if your tenancy is at risk, to help negotiate with the landlord around that impending eviction and hopefully avoid it.
Angus Randall: Back in the Northern Territory, Dr Paul Royce is grateful for increased funding from the Territory and federal governments in the past year, but he says a lot more can be done.
Paul Royce: The system is still broken and one of the things that we are all trying to do is work together to come up with some solutions to make it better.
Angus Randall: This morning, Housing and Homelessness Minister Claire O'Neill announced the federal government had reached a $100 million milestone for funding new crisis, youth and transitional housing projects through the Housing Australia Future Fund.
Sabra Lane: Angus Randall, there.