Australia needs to provide permanent supportive housing for many reasons. The most compelling reason is simple: it permanently ends homelessness for our most marginalised citizens.
Permanent supportive housing combines affordable housing with health and social services for people for whom mainstream systems do not work. It’s an evidence-informed approach that ends homelessness for people who are so excluded from opportunities and mainstream institutions that basic principles of citizenship barely exist for them. They are people whose deprivation, especially through generations, not only makes them sick, but also results in premature deaths.
