Council to Homeless Persons (CHP) has urged Premier Jacinta Allan and Opposition Leader Brad Battin to back a bill to make housing a human right in Victoria.
The Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Amendment (Right to Housing) Bill 2025 is set to be voted on in parliament on Wednesday.
Adding the right to housing to the state's Charter of Human Rights would mean future legislation and regulations, government departments, police and courts would all need to comply with and uphold the right to housing.
The bill means the affordability, accessibility and adequacy of housing would become core to government decisions about housing.
Council to Homeless Persons CEO Deborah Di Natale has written to Ms Allan and Mr Battin, calling on them to support the bill. Read copies of the letters here and here.
"Having somewhere safe and dignified to call home is a fundamental human right. Victoria needs its politicians to recognise that uncontroversial fact," said Ms Di Natale.
"As the rental crisis is causing more and more people to feel the risk of losing their homes, I think most Victorians now understand that homelessness is a failure of systems, not people. A right to safe housing is something that all sides of politics should be in favour of.
"It would make a real difference to the decisions governments make around housing.
"Family violence is the leading driver of homelessness in Victoria. These victim-survivors didn't choose homelessness.
"Tragically, being without a home is killing Victorians.
"We know the average life expectancy of a person experiencing homelessness is just 44 – more than 30 years lower than the median age at death for the general population.
"Accepting such a stark inequity in our society should be unthinkable. When homelessness means premature death, housing must be a human right.
"By supporting this bill, all sides of politics would demonstrate that Victoria is a state that says to every child, every parent, every older person: you matter, and you belong."
Fast facts:
102,000 people sought assistance from homelessness services in Victoria in 2023/24 (up 4 per cent from the previous year)
60,000 of them (58 per cent) were women
12,000 were working Victorians (up 21 per cent in five years)
One third of people seeking homelessness assistance in Australia are in Victoria, but we have the lowest proportion of social housing in the country (2.9 per cent)
