Moving from homelessness to homefulness: five policy areas for change

Hutt St Centre has released its policy priorities for the 2026 South Australian election, calling for both major parties and independent candidates to prioritise the transition from homelessness to homefulness for thousands of people living on the state’s streets. 

Hutt St Centre CEO Chris Burns said as homelessness reached a crisis point, there were five priorities the organisation would like to see addressed. 

Mr Burns said the five priority areas centred around expanding social and affordable housing; securing tenancies and preventing evictions; providing additional emergency and short-term accommodation; fixing system failures and gaps and ensuring sector funding would be secure and adequate. 

“The homelessness sector is under unprecedented pressure,” Mr Burns said. 

“A chronic shortage of housing, combined with the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, is pushing more people into homelessness and trapping others there for longer.  

“Demand for services is at record levels; beds are full, and waitlists continue to grow. At the same time, extreme weather events are increasing the risk of serious harm and death for people forced to sleep rough.  

This crisis is pushing people, frontline services, and entire communities to breaking point. Its impacts extend far beyond those experiencing homelessness, placing increasing strain on our health, justice, and emergency systems, driving higher long-term costs for governments and taxpayers, reducing workforce participation, and undermining community safety and wellbeing.” 

The five policy areas for change are: 

1. Expanding social and affordable housing  

Hutt St Centre is calling on the next State Government to fund and build more social housing stock; to use targeted incentives for landlords to rent to low-income tenants such as direct rental subsidies or tax rebates for landlords; risk mitigation guarantees or subsidised landlord insurance support for housing vulnerable tenants; and reintroduce income-based schemes to increase rental affordability. 

2. Secure tenancies and prevent evictions  

The Aspire program has saved the State Government more than $35 million in avoided services, including hospital bed nights, the criminal justice system and emergency accommodation. It has already housed more than 575 people and achieved a tenancy rate of more than 90 per cent.  

Hutt St Centre would like to see consistent block funding for the Aspire Program as a proven and effective, housing-first intervention model.  

The next Government needs to fund and scale other tailored homelessness support programs to help people secure housing and maintain social/community housing tenancies.  

3. Extra emergency and short-term accommodation   

Significant reform and investment is needed to expand the range of emergency accommodation and short-term accommodation options.   

The next Government must address barriers to accessing emergency and short-term accommodation through a review of eligibility criteria, and to work in partnership to develop culturally-appropriate, flexible and innovative accommodation solutions for First Nation’s people travelling from remote communities into Adelaide to access services and support. 

4. Fix system failures and gaps   

It’s time to end discharge or release from government-funded services and institutions into homelessness through better cross-system service design and investments in transitional or supported accommodation.  

Investment is needed to create a data roadmap, to develop a modern, unified system for all homeless services, capturing real-time data across all service types. 

5. Adequate and secure funding for homelessness services  

The next Government must provide adequate, indexed funding commensurate with service demand, increases in cost of living and other cost pressures.  

Hutt St Centre would like to see a round of 3 + 3 + 3 years of funding secured for the Toward Home and other South Australian alliances, extending existing contracts to ensure continuity of effective partnerships.  

Mr Burns said the sector had been left to support more people with fewer resources and couldn’t continue to provide the same level of services on the same - or non-existent - funding. 

“After a COVID-era boost, homelessness funding to the sector has dropped by more than 11 per cent in real terms. This funding drop – from $102.6m in 2021-22 to $92.3m in 2023-24 - is a 15.4 per cut per client at a time when services are under huge strain,” he said. 

“The decline must be reversed – for the sake of all South Australians.”