Homelessness Week 2020: Everybody Needs a Home

Homelessness Week is held annually and raises awareness for the 116,000 Australians who are without a home on any given night. This year’s event runs from the 2nd to the 7th of August, with the theme ‘Everybody Needs a Home’. A series of activities are planned in partnership with the Everybody's Home campaign.

In 2018, an alliance of housing, homelessness and welfare organisations started the Everybody’s Home campaign with the intention of fixing the broken housing system of Australia, utilising research, advocacy and public campaigning. Over the past two years the campaign has garnered support from over 30,000 individuals and more than 300 organisations.

If you haven't already, we invite you to sign the petition to show that you support every Australian having a home and remember, if you’re talking about homelessness this week don’t forget to use #HW2020 and #EverybodysHome.

This week will see activity surrounding the Social Housing Pledge and the Social Housing Renovation Program (SHARP):
Social Housing Pledge
A pledge to build social housing to create jobs and help end homelessness is at the forefront of our efforts. Affiliates of Everybody’s Home will meet with federal MPs to highlight the need for homelessness and rental stress to be addressed in their electorates. These MPs will be encouraged to sign the pledge and commit to lobbying the Federal Government for additional investment in social housing. Homelessness Week 2020 is drawing attention to the need for federal MPs to address homelessness and rental stress in their electorates by using COVID stimulus efforts to invest in social housing.

Social Housing and Renovation Program (SHARP)
The Social Housing Acceleration and Renovation Program (SHARP) explains how 30,000 social housing properties can be built over four years, resulting in 18,000 jobs per year. It also highlights that if the Federal Government is to build more social housing they can provide a huge boost to the economy alongside eradicating homelessness.  If you’re interested to learn more, visit https://bit.ly/2X5zDNH