Crisis accommodation for homeless at capacity

While the number of people sleeping rough fell by 24 people compared to the count in August last year, occupation of temporary or crisis accommodation rose by 16.8% to 592 people – 94% of available bed capacity.

Our winter street count found 254 people sleeping rough on the streets in the early hours of Tuesday 6 August.

A total of 195 volunteers took part in the street count from 1am to 3am, including 30 City of Sydney staff and 15 advisers who have personally experienced homelessness.

In February, the City signed an agreement with the NSW Government, the Institute of Global Homelessness, St Vincent de Paul, St Vincent’s Health, Mission Australia, Salvation Army, Wesley Mission, Neami National and Yfoundations.

The agreement included a target to reduce rough sleeping in the City of Sydney area by 25% by 2020 and by 50% by 2025.

We have contributed $100,000 to the St Vincent de Paul Society to establish a Sydney office to coordinate the project.

The local, independent office will bring together various organisations and services working to reduce homelessness. This will make it easier to share information and coordinate responses to reduce the number of people sleeping rough and help prevent more people becoming homeless.

We’ve also invested $6.6 million over 3 years to help reduce homelessness in the city. This includes a $3.5 million contribution to the NSW Government’s Department of Family and Community Services over 3 years to run specialist homelessness services.

Since 2004, we’ve helped build 835 new affordable housing dwellings, collecting levies from developers and selling our land to affordable housing providers at discount rates.

Read more about the City of Sydney’s role in responding to rough sleeping and homelessness.