Ten thousand Australians are becoming homeless each month. As the housing crisis and cost of living pressures tip more people out of stable accommodation. In Adelaide, outreach teams are connecting the city's rough sleepers to services, in a bid to find pathways to a permanent home. Agencies are also preparing to activate 'code red' alerts when temperatures spike. Opening cool spaces to keep people safe from extreme heat.
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00:00In a pocket of Adelaide's parklands, a small group of homeless men have banded together
00:07to run a makeshift camp, helping each other with the basics and acting as a support network.
00:13You could say we're a democracy almost. Everybody has their say here. You'd be amazed at conversations
00:20that can actually happen around here.
00:22Sticking together is also a matter of safety in numbers as they survive life rough sleeping.
00:28There's no way to describe to someone who hasn't been homeless what it's like.
00:33Hugh has been living on the streets for more than a decade.
00:36A house and a home, it's a very definite wall and line between what's yours, a space that's
00:43yours and the rest of the world. If you don't have that, there's no relaxing.
00:50For Mick, he became homeless four years ago after his nearly 20 year marriage broke down.
00:55There have been times where, you know, just even doing the simplest things become hard.
01:02Also helping Mick and Hugh through the hard times are outreach teams, who check in on
01:06the city's 200 or so rough sleepers and try to connect them to services. And they're meeting
01:11more and more people. Across the country, homelessness has surged by 22% in the last
01:17three years.
01:18There's a population of people who are exceptionally vulnerable to systems and to changes that
01:23we see through the rental market, changes that we see in cost of living crisis, and
01:27that is the population that experience rough sleeping.
01:30On days of extreme heat this summer, code reds will be declared, activating services,
01:35including call centres, to escape dangerous temperatures.
01:38The outreach teams become really important in getting the message out to people who are
01:43sleeping rough, that there is some really extreme weather coming, but also that there
01:49are options, options available for shelter.
01:52And in centres like this one in Adelaide CBD, several agencies are working under the
01:56one roof, trying to get people off the streets.
02:02Each success in finding someone a home is celebrated.
02:09While homelessness is a complex and challenging issue, it's also a major concern for many
02:14communities worried or frustrated by antisocial behaviour like fighting and drug use. All
02:20of which are valid issues, say those in the sector, but they're appealing for understanding.
02:25I think every community that has rough sleeping populations or homelessness can get really
02:30distressed about it, and often we hear, not in my backyard.
02:35What I would say is that services are there to support, and everybody deserves a home,
02:40and everyone deserves dignity.
02:42Mick is fighting to get back into a stable home, a process he knows will take one step
02:48at a time.
02:49Once you hit rock bottom, there's only really one way to go, isn't there?