Listening to homeless people – they’ve been saying it for a while.

This submission is in response to the Consultation Paper issued by the NSW Department of Family and Community Services, regarding future directions for specialist homelessness services. The submission reinforces the importance of engaging with homeless consumers in a meaningful fashion in developing reforms in relation to homelessness services and the provision of social housing.

The submission recognises that the consultation is an opportunity to focus attention on improving the standards and quality of service delivery in specialist homelessness services. However, the submission emphasises that it is fundamentally important that the issues and concerns that have been identified by homeless people over the last three years are also addressed. These have centred on the processes, procedures and decision-making activity of Housing NSW in considering applications for housing, applications for priority housing, applications for housing transfers, complaints about conditions and disrepair, complaints about threatening or intimidating behaviour from other tenants, and decisions made to terminate tenancies.