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Janaya Sansbury-Newchurch has been on a journey in search of a place to call home.
The Kaurna and Narungga woman grew up in foster care in Adelaide, before moving to Alice Springs with her father, and then on to Melbourne with her mother.
Both her parents have struggled with addiction, and when her mother relapsed in Melbourne, Jenaya became homeless.
She says she was forced to move between different shelters.
“It's very hard, hey, because it's hard to get into a routine, and it's hard to do day to day things when you don't know what the next day holds for you, so yeah, very hard.”
The 19-year-old now lives independently, but in the shelters, she saw homelessness affecting a vast section of the community.
“When I went to the homelessness shelter it was kind of a bit shocking, because some of the people there, you wouldn't know they were homeless because they have their life together. They study, they have a job and they have heaps of stuff and then you just find out they're homeless, so a lot of people you wouldn't even recognise that are going through it.”
A community event in the southeast of Melbourne has aimed to shine a light on a growing issue.
It's one of Melbourne's most multicultural areas, but Greater Dandenong Mayor, Eden Foster, says unique characteristics of her council can be factors leading people to spiral into homelessness.
“I guess we have a very multicultural community and so with that comes perhaps past trauma from their homeland, so we're looking at mental health concerns, there may be some substance abuse, so different levels of trauma and psychological issues. Unemployment issues as well - we've got perhaps a higher unemployment rate here in the City of Greater Dandenong than perhaps the rest of metropolitan Melbourne. So again, another layer to that iceberg. But what the community sees is the homelessness, without necessarily seeing what's underneath that.”
In Dandenong, the proportion of people who are homeless is the highest in Victoria.
Nearly 3000 people accessed homelessness services in the last year.
WAYSS is a homelessness support service which provides assistance in region of southern Victoria.
Its CEO is Wayne Merritt.
“Homelessness is in a catastrophic state at the moment. There's a lack of housing, lack of resourcing, and a lack of options for people. So what we need to do is look at short term solutions to address this issue which is working with the whole community on what those issues are. How do we get access to more housing quickly for people while we have a long term plan to address this issue?”
Mr Merritt says the rising cost of living has only put more strain on his support service.
“Within our organisation we've seen a large number of people coming through both family violence and homelessness services. We've had to reduce the services that we can provide to them in terms of housing responses, just because of the demand, increase in living expenses for people. That's all having an impact on the work that we're doing now. So we're seeing a new group of people come through requesting support, alongside people who've got complex needs.”
Community leaders have used Homelessness Week as a rallying call for meaningful, nationwide solutions.
