Submission_National Housing and Homelessness Plan 2023_With Appendix (002)

MCM and MCM Housing welcome the opportunity to contribute to the development of the 10-year National Housing and Homelessness Plan (the Plan) and recognise the enormous opportunity it provides to achieve the changes needed to end homelessness and enshrine access to housing as a human right in Australia. [...] The youth homelessness system operates differently and to some extent separately from the rest of the homelessness system and requires a strategic policy framework to ensure coordination of its particular components and to ensure consistent, equitable outcomes for children and young people experiencing homelessness. [...] To effectively meet the needs of unaccompanied children and young people experiencing homelessness, the Plan must include a specialist strategy to end child and youth homelessness that maps both the reforms needed for prevention of child and youth homelessness and the services and youth housing models needed for best practice responses to children and young people without homes. [...] Responding to the needs of dependent children in the youth homelessness system The babies, toddlers, and children of young people in the homelessness system have been classified as extensions of their parents and neglected by government policy and a dedicated response. [...] Build the scale and impact of social and affordable housing Increased affordable, appropriate and safe housing is required to address the escalating homelessness crisis and ensure Australia’s economic productivity and liveability, and most importantly the wellbeing of our community is restored.