Across 12 months and 12 cities, the Walk In Her Shoes exhibition and forum series engaged thousands of Victorians in meaningful conversations about homelessness and how we can end it in this state.

At every stop on the tour, community members shared with us their priorities for homelessness action. We’ve gathered all that they told us in the Walk In Her Shoes Statewide Community Insights Report, which we presented at a very special event at Parliament House in September.

Read the report to learn about the five key actions Victorians want taken to end homelessness.

People with disability are more likely to experience homelessness than Victorians without disability.

As the Victorian Government shapes its next State Disability Plan and the Victorian Autism Plan (2027-2031), CHP provided a submission urging actions to ensure the SHS system is adequately resourced to be accessible and inclusive for all.

This includes preventing people with disability from entering homelessness, expanding responses to crisis, and ensuring agencies have access to the expertise and resources required to effectively support people with disability. It also means investing in a massive expansion of the social housing system, recognising that it is a vital safety net for many people with disability. 

A new report by CHP has for the first time documented the full, limited extent of assertive outreach in Victoria.

The report finds Victoria currently has a total equivalent of 40.5 full time workers to support a rough sleeper population that exceeds 11,000 people. This equates to 1 worker for, conservatively, every 272 rough sleepers. 55 local government areas have no assertive outreach at all.

Amongst its recommendations, CHP has called on the Victorian government to expand assertive outreach programs to fund at least 177 full-time workers across the state, by expanding existing government-funded programs, resourcing and expanding existing community-funded programs, and establishing new assertive outreach programs in local government areas that currently have none.