Dr Jed Donoghue, National General Manager Homelessness at The Salvation Army, ponders the housing and homelessness service approach in Tasmania.
At the beginning of the Housing Connect partnership in 2013, there was a collective desire by the five partnering (NFP) agencies in Tasmania to work together and pursue the ‘Holy Grail’ of service integration (Donoghue 2014). By the end of the partnership, there was more appetite for a competitive rather than a collective tender. I will try to unpack why this occurred and identify some of the internal and external forces at play in the partnership. However, the fact that the original Housing Connect partnership lasted for over 10 years is a major achievement and something all parties should be very proud of in a competitive funding environment.
In general terms, competitive markets claim to offer more economic opportunities and less risk of corporate powerbrokers dominating citizens’ economic and social wellbeing. At the same time, unconcentrated markets with a diversity of companies are more resilient to changes in supply chains and system shocks (as we saw during Covid) that can expose the single points of failure in monopoly markets.
The Productivity Commission (2017) highlights five attributes of effective service delivery in its assessment of the potential costs and benefits of Human Services reform:
- Accountability: Whether the reform option would result in service providers being more accountable to those who fund the services (taxpayers and users)
- Efficiency: Whether the reform option would lead to incentives for providers to reduce the costs of providing services while still maintaining quality, and for users to select the services that best meet their needs
- Equity: Who would be affected by the reform option, and how
- Quality: Whether the reform option would lead to incentives for providers to offer high-quality services to users
- Responsiveness: Whether the reform option would result in service providers being more responsive to the needs of service users
However, the Productivity Commission (2017) also note that not all areas of human services are amenable to the mechanisms of competition and consumer choice. In their report, the commission found reform could offer the greatest improvements in outcomes for people who use:
- End-of-life care services
- Family and community services
- Public hospitals for elective care following a referral from their general practitioner
- Public dental services
- Services in remote Indigenous communities
- Social housing (but not homelessness services)
Challenges
In terms of Housing Connect 1.0, there were three main integration challenges. The first challenge was to ensure that the participants worked together effectively to achieve greater cohesion, coherence, efficiency, effectiveness and consumer accessibility. The second challenge was to effectively link specialist homelessness services with other human services, including social housing. These links were important because of the focus on households and individuals with complex ‘support needs.’ Thirdly, there was the challenge of effectively linking homelessness services with the wider set of social inclusion policies, as well as mainstream programs and services such as AOD, mental health and affordable rental housing. The integration challenge was to develop a coherent approach that linked homelessness service provision with the demand and supply of mainstream and other specialist services (Donoghue 2014).
The Brotherhood of St Lawrence Review (2019) of Housing Connect found that:
- It is better than its predecessor, allowing for greater collaboration and more efficient responses to people in need of housing assistance.
- There is a lack of integration of crisis and transitional accommodation providers into Housing Connect, which constrains the capacity of the system to effectively and efficiently develop and support tailored housing pathways.
- Much of the demand at the Front Doors stems from people with non-housing enquiries or seeking assistance with Housing Register applications.
The Brotherhood Review (2019) also noted that structural factors were squeezing the supply of affordable housing at the lower end of the housing market, pushing out low-income households. Private rental supply in Australia has declined; rental vacancy rates are less than 1% and the supply of lower end private rental properties is very limited; 39% of lower priced dwellings are being rented by higher income households out of choice; and less than 2% of advertised dwelling are affordable to low-income households.
In addition, the demand for social housing has increased. Social Housing Register applications increased by 8.6 per cent from 2,962 applicants in June 2017 to 3,216 applicants in June 2018 and continued to climb to over 4,000 applicants by June 2023. Meanwhile, the turnover of social housing stock remains low, with public housing occupancy rates at 98.8 per cent in June 2018, combined with the low turnover of properties and increased waiting times. On any given night, 122,494 people in Australia are experiencing homelessness (ABS Census 2021). In other words, nearly 1 in 200 people were homeless on Census night. Over 224,300 applicants were waiting for social housing nationally in January 2024, with an average waiting time of 2 years for people in ‘greatest need’ and 8 years for people who are a ‘general’ applicant.
The Brotherhood Review (2019) suggested several ways to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of Housing Connect, including:
- Enhancing the Front Door (or Gateway) role
- Re-aligning and targeting support capability across Housing Connect
- Building and implementing a (fidelity) evidence-informed model
- Building a more effective housing assistance system that optimises alignment between housing and support by strengthening collaboration between Housing Connect, Housing Tasmania, community housing providers, and crisis and transitional accommodation services.
Housing Connect 2.0
The Housing Connect 2.0 service system is underpinned by a design logic centred around six key organising principles:
- Age
- Capabilities
- Life-course perspective
- Place (importance of)
- Stewardship of resources
- Timely action and intervention
Following the review (2019), a co-design workshop was convened in December 2019 with Communities Tasmania and the Housing Connect Steering Committee, where all recommendations of the review were discussed and accepted by the group. The leaders agreed to work together to drive a whole-of-system reform based on a set of agreed draft principles.
The capabilities approach is at the heart of the Housing Connect 2.0 reform. This approach has been selectively applied to understanding, evaluating and addressing aspects of homelessness. Applied to people at risk of or experiencing homelessness, this approach focuses on the policies, practices and relationships that enable individuals and households to make choices, and the real opportunities available in the community to achieve them. It focuses on what people can be and do – their potential – rather than their deficits.
The life course perspective underpins the services, people, pathways and practices in Housing Connect 2.0. This perspective provides a multi-dimensional approach to understanding human development and capability. It recognises people are shaped by their cultural and historical context as well as their life stage and key life transition points.
The reform process led to an expansion of the HC (reform) steering committee, including representatives from crisis and transitional accommodation providers, Wintringham and the peak body Shelter Tasmania, which had unintended consequences. The potential to expand and enhance relationships was a good idea, but the expansion occurred with a change in the CEO group. This impacted existing agency relationships, which had been underpinned by the Operational Managers Group (OMG) and Regional Management Group (RMG), which were both discontinued. In hindsight, the loss of these interagency operational management groups reduced the strength of agency relationships and the amount of coordination and collaboration undertaken during the lengthy reform process.
The five Housing Connect collaborating partners group continued to meet and cooperate. However, a change of CEOs at the table also reduced the strength of the relationships and the collective power of the partnership. As new leaders joined the table, there was a loss of knowledge, trust and common purpose. Individual agency agendas became stronger, or more focused, and there was less collective impact. This led to reduced strategic and instrumental cooperation when it came to tender time in September 2023. In addition, the government’s decision to have one statewide Front Door service rather than two providers in the north and south of the state, to drive consistency, probably reinforced individual agency plans.
Conclusions
After 30 June 2024, the Housing Connect 2.0 partnership was reduced from 5 to 3 agencies with one Front Door (or Gateway) service provided by Anglicare Tasmania, and coaching and support services provided by Catholic Care and Hobart City Mission.
In the longer term, there may only be two agencies in the ‘partnership’, with one providing Front Door Services and the other providing all the support and coaching. This has been the case in the northern part of the state since the inception of Housing Connect. This is a logical conclusion rather than a desire to reduce diversity and client choice, which are important and necessary for a healthy homelessness and social housing service system.
In any change project in the NFP sector, there are opportunities to improve service delivery outcomes for the people seeking assistance. Time will tell if the people of Tasmania who have been forced into homelessness will get a better homelessness service after such a lengthy and detailed reform process, but I certainly hope that they do.
Read also: ACOSS calls for bold action on the housing crisis
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