Whitsunday Homeless Service Funding
MEMBER for Whitsunday Amanda Camm MP has welcomed today’s announcement by the State Government that they will be allocating $660 000 to fund a dedicated homelessness service in the Whitsundays.
Ms Camm stated that there had been a sharp increase in the number of people across the region requiring emergency housing and crisis support due to increases in cost of living and housing market pressures.
“This announcement really is a win for all our local organisations including the Whitsunday Neighbourhood Centre, Proserpine Community Centre, Whitsunday Counselling and Support, who are on the front-line day in day out and have been seeing an increase in the number of people each day requiring crisis support and having nowhere in the Whitsunday area to refer them to”, Ms Camm said.
$4.4m in funding was announced for homelessness services as part of the Mackay Whitsunday Regional Action Plan in the 2023-24 State budget in June, but with no further detail provided, it was unclear as to how these funds would be broken down.
Ms Camm had written to the Minister asking for clarification of the funding breakdown to ensure all areas of Mackay, Isaac and Whitsunday, which make up the Regional Action Plan area, had adequate support to service the people on the ground where it was required.
The government has advised that only $1.29m of the now $5m in funding has been allocated to service providers across the areas of Mackay, Clermont and Moranbah.
“There was no funding allocated for the Whitsunday Region. None! With the Whitsunday area having the tightest housing market in the area, it is completely unacceptable. We have members of our community finding themselves in a vulnerable position, finally reaching out for help, only to be told there is no support available?”
“It’s just not good enough, and it was putting an incredible amount of added stress onto our first responder services, like the Proserpine and Whitsunday Neighbourhood Centres, who have no one local to refer them to”, Ms Camm stated.
Ms Camm welcomes the funding announcement today and has committed to continue to advocate for the rest of the proposed funding to be allocated across the Mackay, Whitsunday and Isaac region on a need’s basis, as soon as possible.