Felicity began by canvassing the three important arguments for ending homelessness.

• Cost – There is clear evidence that people who have their needs met through crisis-based and emergency services (ambulance, Emergency Departments, acute units, courts, Police) can cost more than people who are permanently housed and and to whom on-going support services are provided.

• Ethical - A very high proportion of the most vulnerable people in our society are homeless.

• Results - Although the chronically homeless represent a small share of the overall homeless population, they absorb up to 50% of the homelessness resources and the solution to reversing this that has produced clear results is housing first via permanent supportive housing.
  

Felicity went on to look at models for permanent supportive housing and their potential application to youth homelessness. She also briefly looked at Foyer models of connecting young people with education and training and housing services.

Listen to the key note presentations from Minister Tanya Plibersek, Julian Disney, Claire Martin, Liz Fritz and Dr Walsh recorded at the 2009 conference. 

Listen via the 2009 Queesnland Shelter Conference page

The opening session on Day 2 of 'Making sense of the big picture', the Queensland Shelter Conference, February 2009, heard four speakers outline what they saw as the future of affordable housing, social housing, and homelessness in Australia over the next 4 years given recent initiatives under the Rudd Government.

Below you can access three of the presentations:

1. The Minister for Housing, Tanya Plibersek.

The Minister gave the keynote speech outlining the initiatives under the National Affordable Housing Agreement (NAHA) and The Road Home, the White Paper on the Government's strategy for dealing with homelessness.

 2. Julian Disney, National Affordable Housing Summit Group

Julian Disney welcomed the recent developments by the Rudd Government, what he described as a 'huge quantum leap in funding from the Commonwealth'. At the same time, he said, there were things that he would still like to see happen, specifically the placing of the Minister for Housing in Cabinet, and achieving a better balance between the initiatives under the NAHA and the current program of Commonwealth Rent Assitance and the ongoing 'tax assistance to wealthy home owners'. He argued that there were three longer term targets to be worked on:

• Strengthening/regenerating public housing, saying that the failure of public housing was mainly the failure of Treasury and not of the form itself.
• Major growth in not-for-profit housing provision, saying that Australia was a 'freak among Western societies' in our small proportion of provision here.
• An increase in the Natiional Rental Affordability Scheme to encourage private investment in affordable housing construction. 

3. Claire Martin, Executive Office, Australian Council of Social Services

Claire Martin also welcome the recent developments, tongue-in-cheek suggesting that we take heed of the maxim 'don't waste a good crisis', referring here to the global recession current. She then proceeded to consider the impact of the initiatives, looking in some detail at four examples of individuals and families in different housing circumstances and asking:

• How might lives be changed?
• Which lives might be changed?
• What are the risks and opportunities for low income households? 

The Gold Coast Homelessness Network is an excellent example of a well-integrated, multi-agency network of services addressing issues of homelessness in Australia.

Liz Fritz, a founding member of the Network, presented on the development of the Network, and on its successes at the Queensland Shelter Conference 2009. Some of the successes Liz highlighted were:

• The development of a training package  - the De-Mystifying Homelessness Project - that is being used with police, Centrelink staff and others with whom homeless people come into regular contact.
• The development of an Integrated Service Planning took for people with high and complex needs.
• The Homelessness Connect event, bringing together services and homelessness people.

You can hear Liz Fritz's speech here.

Recent legislation in Queensland is having a significant impact on the lives of homeless people, argued Dr Tamara Walsh at the Queensland Shelter 2009 Conference. Dr Walsh, whose interest lies in the impact of law on people in poverty, has conducted research into the implementation of recent vagrancy and public space legislation and presented compelling evidence of the impact of this legislation on the self-perceptions of homeless people, and on their access to legal redress when charged or fined.

You can listen to Dr Walsh's speech here.

You can read the research papers from which the speech was drawn by visiting Dr Walsh's site.