St Vincent’s partners with frontline service providers to unite for Sydney’s homeless non-residents

30 Aug 2022

Partnering with the City of Sydney, Homelessness NSW, Jesuit Refugee Service, End Street Sleeping Collaboration and others, St Vincent’s recently joined the call for a range of reforms, including federal and state government action to give non-residents access to government-funded services when in crisis; opening pathways to allow for non-residents to apply for permanent residency; and assistance with housing and employment pathways.

Erin Longbottom, Homeless Health Service NUM said that one of the success stories of Sydney’s pandemic response had been how the NSW Government, the City of Sydney, and a range of other health and community organisations worked together to provide homeless non-residents with accommodation and other supports to keep them safe through the lockdowns and beyond.

“When COVID-19 arrived, the NSW Government was very quick to work with housing, health and other service providers to make sure people sleeping rough or experiencing other types of homelessness received accommodation in empty hotels, with ‘wrap around’ services available to keep them safe from the virus,” Erin said.

While this move was a great success in keeping our communities safe during the Pandemic, it quickly became evident that a core group of people experiencing homelessness who are not residents of Australia had been travelling ‘under the radar’, and without any social or health supports.

“Ordinarily, this group – made up of non-resident refugees, asylum seekers, foreign students, New Zealand citizens and undocumented non-citizens – are ineligible for Medicare-funded healthcare, emergency shelter, and other government supports because of their visa status. This makes them one of the city’s least supported groups, completely reliant on philanthropically-funded charities for food and other necessities”, said Erin.

It is estimated that approximately 20% of Sydney’s homeless community are currently non-residents. Our data tells us that the number of non-residents staying at St Vincent’s Sydney’s Tierney House is increasing each year and their length of stay is almost three times longer than other patients, because of limited discharge options.

To address this, St Vincent’s has formed part of a task force with other frontline NGOs to lobby the federal and NSW governments to make some permanent changes so this group could be supported long-term.

“At the very least, non-residents should be allowed to access the same sort of crisis supports that are available to Australian citizens. It is appalling that of two people sleeping rough on the same Sydney street, one is able to access a government-funded homeless shelter or receive Medicare-funded healthcare, but the other isn’t. We need to change the rules so that this barrier to care is removed” said Erin.

St Vincent’s partners with frontline service providers to unite for Sydney’s homeless non-residents

St Vincent’s partners with frontline service providers to unite for Sydney’s homeless non-residents

Read more about the challenges facing our non-resident communities experiencing homelessness in the Sydney Morning Herald.