Southern Tasmania's only homeless outreach service at maximum capacity

It is eight degrees on a chilly Tuesday morning, and the Salvation Army's Street 2 Home outreach team has driven along an off-road dirt track in southern Tasmanian bushland.

They are looking for Effie*, a woman living in a tent with her German shepherd, Gus.

Street 2 Home is the only homelessness outreach program in southern Tasmania that searches for people sleeping rough, asks if they need help, and connects them to essential services.

The program says it is struggling to keep up with demand, as the numbers of people coming onto the street outpace those coming off.

With extra funding, it said the program could expand state-wide, having recently closed both its north and north-west operations for financial reasons.

Rental rejections led to the street

With a life of renting under her belt, Effie* was not worried about finding somewhere to live after being evicted from her home.

But things quickly changed.

"I was unsuccessful for every house that I applied for," she said.

"I applied all up the east coast, Queenstown, up north, and then I started to a get a little bit worried."

She said the difficulty of finding a home or emergency accommodation with a dog meant she had no choice but to pitch a tent and was soon noticed by a passer-by who contacted Street 2 Home.

They have visited her regularly since.

"I've got the hand warmers and body warmers … my darling friend from [The Salvation Army] brings me those," Effie said.

"My dog keeps my feet warm because he lays across my legs and it's not really that bad."

Burden on homeless to find services themselves

For a region with roughly 2,500 people experiencing homelessness, the Street 2 Home team of just three people is stretched to capacity.

Program lead and outreach worker Chris Allen said many other homelessness services were based online, and this put the burden on the individual to seek out help themselves.

"[People sleeping rough] might not have heard about a lot of the programs and a lot of the services that are designed to actually help them," he said.

"Most of them won't know how to use a phone, or they don't have internet. They don't know how to look up those services and find them."

Success stories few and far between

What used to be a state-wide operation was scaled back to the south due to a lack of funding.

In September last year, the program shut its doors in northern Tasmania, and in June this year, the north-west met the same fate.

"When I first started doing outreach … we wouldn't get as many calls. Now we have daily calls,"

Mr Allen said.

There is no limit on the number of cases or people the team supports, but this leaves it stretched thin.

"The more people we come across, the less time we can spend with each individual," Mr Allen said.

He said success stories were becoming rarer over the years.

"We've had fewer [people getting into housing] this year than we had last year," he said.

"We're seeing [people] come onto the street faster than we're seeing them come off of it."

Housing waitlist times in the state have reached roughly 1.7 years, as of August this year.

Mr Allen said the focus was on making it as comfortable as possible for the person experiencing homelessness, while they worked to help them find housing.

"If our details are attached to [an application], we'll go out, we'll get [the person] on the phone … and we'll make sure they make it to those appointments, so they don't miss that property," Mr Allen said.

Homelessness Australia director Catherine Robinson said outreach services offered "critical" human connection that online services lacked.

By placing the burden on the person experiencing homelessness to research services themselves, Professor Robinson said this could deter them from getting help.

"Having the opportunity to develop a relationship of trust and care with an outreach provider could be the absolute changing point in their willingness to seek early help,"

she said.

Homeless reporting missing some

Between 2016 and 2021, the number of homeless Tasmanians increased 45 per cent.

But Professor Robinson said homelessness was often invisible, and this number could be higher.

A new University of Tasmania report, co-authored by Professor Robinson, measured the number of rough sleepers in the state, including people on streets, in tents and cars, on private land like driveways, or in sheds and garages.

A total of 944 Tasmanians were sleeping rough when they first accessed a specialist homelessness service, in the financial year ending 2023.

For 74 per cent of these people, it was not the first time they had slept rough.

Insufficient affordable housing and homeless accommodation, as well as mental illness, were some of the main contributing factors, according to the report.

It recommended better resourcing, more shelter for rough sleepers, and more closely involving mental health care in homelessness services.

Despite struggling to keep up with the demand for services, Mr Allen says he is proud of the work the team does.

"When they see someone in need, they don't let it go," he said.