![]() ![]() In the last four years, 460 beds have been taken off the emergency accommodation market as rooming houses are redeveloped to cash in on the housing boom.Īnother 110 beds will soon be gone - including 80 at the Gatwick Hotel in St Kilda. The number of people sleeping rough in Melbourne has increased by 70 per cent since 2014, and over the same time the number of beds available to the homeless has also plummeted.Ī survey of rough sleepers in 2016 found there were 247 people sleeping rough on the streets of Melbourne compared to 142 in 2014. Last -resort housing consists of legal rooming and boarding houses, emergency accommodation and transitional housing. The report found investment in last-resort housing had a cost-benefit ratio of 2.7 - that is, for every $1 spent on housing rough sleepers society would derive $2.70 worth of benefits over a 20-year period. Monetising homelessness has been described as a "game changer". Getting people off the streets was calculated to have the following economic benefits per person: "We hope that this will make clear to the Government that if you provide people with a roof over their heads there will be a lesser demand and impact on emergency services, on healthcare, on the police force because there will be a reduction of crime and, last but not least, it will greatly improve the quality of life of the people involved," she said. Lead author of the report Ellen Witte believes the findings should drive further government investment in emergency accommodation for the homeless. With 7,600 Victorians living on the streets, that represents an annual cost of $194 million.ĭespite projected one-off costs of $60,000 to create each emergency accommodation bed, economists calculated that the investment would result in savings of $10,800 per year when calculated over 20 years. ![]() It is significantly cheaper for governments to provide last-resort housing than to have people continuing to sleep on the streets, new research commissioned by the University of Melbourne has found.įor the first time, the cost of homelessness in Victoria has been costed at $25,615 per person per year, covering health, crime and other factors, research conducted by SGS Economics and Planning found. ![]()
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