Up to 50 people are believed to be regularly sleeping rough in Daylesford – in cars, in the town centre, in public toilets and at the edge of the forest.
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Hepburn Shire Council, Hepburn Health, CAFS and Parks Victoria have been alerted to the problem and are planning a group meeting to get a grip on the problem’s magnitude of the problem and plot a strategy to help the township’s most-at-need.
The issue is being raised concurrently to concerns the Department of Social Services had reallocated emergency relief funds this year away from Hepburn Health, distributed instead to three Ballarat organisations.
One Daylesford woman has made a stand about the issue, calling on the council to turn its current Duke Street offices into a homeless hostel once it moves to the new Hepburn Hub at The Rex.
Gillian Trebilcock said Daylesford’s homeless were not particularly visible, but that did not mean the problem didn’t exist.
“We need more money for the homeless. I think it should come from three tiers – local, state and federal, because they all have a humanitarian responsibility,” she said.
“I think we should hang on to Duke Street and refit and refurbish it as a hostel for homeless people.
“It would be a way of getting more money into the shire under a different umbrella – funding from the state and federal level for homelessness. It would be a very cheap way of housing the homeless.
“They’re human beings and they should be included in our town. A warm, loving community is the best thing we can do for them.”
Birch ward councillor Kate Redwood said council would probably look at other options first, including using a house in Creswick determined to emergency accommodation that wasn’t currently “sufficiently used”.
However, Cr Redwood said the first step was to get a “good grip” on the issue.
“What I’m asking the next council to do is a needs study of just what the homeless issues are here, and then looking at what the stock is of relatively unused houses, before we can step into doing something about remodelling existing buildings.”
Hepburn Health CEO Glenn Campbell said the issue was a longstanding one for Daylesford, raised most recently by Parks Victoria following reports from rangers.
Mr Campbell said Hepburn Health didn’t receive any funding or have any formal accountability for homelessness, but it wanted to be part of a group effort in solving the problem.
“We’ve now written to he shire to say if there’s anything we can do to help this situation, we’d like to be part of the solution.”
