Brisbane city during 50 Lives 50 Homes registry week in June 2010. Photography: Patrick Hamilton.

Local Communities

Below is a list of some of the local communities we work with through Advance to Zero.


  • + - Community Dashboards

    Dashboard information for local zero communities can be found here:

  • + - The Adelaide Zero Project

    The Adelaide Zero Project is a coalition of homelessness, housing, health, government, university, corporate and community partners working collaboratively to end rough sleeping in the inner city of Adelaide using a collective impact approach.

    The Adelaide Zero Project (AZP) was launched in 2018. With support from the City of Adelaide and SA Housing Authority, Adelaide became the first Australian community to use the Advance to Zero methodology to count down to the goal of ending homelessness.

  • + - SA Alliance to End Homelessness

    The South Australian Alliance to End Homelessness brings together a range of people and organisations committed to taking action to end homelessness in South Australia.

    We are a community of practice or network which supports the implementation of the Advance to Zero Homelessness Methodology in South Australia – as pioneered by the Adelaide Zero Project.

    This methodology has been developed by communities across Australia learning the lessons from their efforts to end homelessness and importantly the successful efforts in North America.

    The SAAEH is committed to supporting integration, sharing infrastructure, building capacity, enabling communication, promoting collaboration, and sharing lessons learnt with others involved in the service delivery alliances established through the Future Directions for Homelessness in SA reforms.

    For more info email info@aaeh.org.au

    For more information visit: https://saaeh.org.au

  • + - Brisbane Alliance to End Homelessness

    The Brisbane Alliance to End Homelessness (BAEH) is a community-based consortium aimed at building public support to end homelessness.


    Many individuals and families continue to be trapped in a cycle of homelessness, often transitioning from unstable accommodation to emergency shelters to rough sleeping. This can continue for many years resulting in a state of chronic homelessness.

    It does not need to be like this. Homelessness in Brisbane can and should be ended, and any incidents of homelessness that do occur should be rare, brief and non-recurring.

    Brisbane Alliance to End Homelessness (BAEH) is an alliance of organisations committed to this vision of ending homelessness in Brisbane.

    The alliance has formed following the successful conclusion of the 500 Lives 500 Homes campaign, which saw a coalition of over 30 government and non-government agencies in Brisbane successfully house 580 individual and family households over a period of three years. The coalition applied internationally recognised, evidence-based Housing First Principles to achieve and then exceed their goal.

    The success of the 500 Lives 500 Homes campaign demonstrated that homelessness is not inevitable, Housing First principles work in the Brisbane environment, and there is great power in organisations working together to deliver a coordinated approach to ending homelessness.

    The Brisbane Alliance to End Homelessness seeks to leverage the knowledge, skills, networks and progress made in this campaign.

    The partners in the 500 Lives 500 Homes campaign developed the Housing First Roadmap, a toolkit for breaking the cycle of Brisbane’s housing, homelessness and mental health challenges. The Roadmap addresses systemic causes of homelessness, while also recognising the value and necessity of reducing homelessness one person, one family at a time.

    In keeping with the Housing First Roadmap, our tactics for ending homelessness in Brisbane are to:

    • know by name who is experiencing homelessness, their circumstances and what they need
    • implement a system where people who are experiencing homelessness can access well-connected housing, health and social services, commonly known as a coordinated entry system
    • line up housing supply that is affordable, safe and suitable to the needs of individuals and families
    • provide support and connection to community to move people into housing and keep them housed
    • integrate healthcare where appropriate
    • work with the justice system in breaking the cycle of homelessness
    • create housing pathways and strategies for women and children who have experienced violence.

    BAEH have a shared commitment to work with the Queensland Government’s Commitment to Reduce Homelessness in Queensland through the Housing Strategy.

    The Brisbane Alliance to End Homelessness will work with the Australian Alliance to End Homelessness (AAEH) to measure our progress.

    Current members of BAEH include:

    Ivan Frkovic BSW MSWAP, Mental Health Commissioner for the Queensland Mental Health Commission is a proud supporter of the BAEH campaign to end homelessness.


  • + - Brisbane Zero Campaign

    Brisbane Zero, the main campaign of the Brisbane Alliance to End Homelessness, embraces the Advance to Zero or Functional Zero approach to ending homelessness.

    It aims to bring together community organisations, governments, and healthcare providers to better address ongoing homelessness.

    By working together, the project is designed to ensure a collective impact which will see homelessness becoming a rare, brief, and non-recurring experience.

    The project has four key focuses:

    Establishing a quality By-Name List to provide real time visibility on the homeless community. The alliance works with local communities to collect and track quality data to evaluate the progress of the project and to help build a by-name list of those experiencing homelessness. By identifying and understanding who is rough sleeping within the local neighbourhood, communities are able to provide more appropriate and effective resources and ongoing support systems.

    Advocating for an increased supply of affordable (and permanent) housing Through ongoing advocacy, the project aims to increase the supply of affordable, permanent housing options within the wider Brisbane community. Adequate supply of affordable housing is key to ensuring that more people have access to a home and can receive the ongoing support needed to sustain their tenancy.

    Providing ongoing housing and support to those who it most Ongoing support is essential to ensuring that homelessness is a brief and non-reoccurring experience. By providing consistent and ongoing support, those needing assistance can receive adequate healthcare, mental health support, and services to improve their overall quality of life.

    Connecting people, health care services and community Finally the project aims to bring together community organisations, health-care services, and the wider community to collaboratively address homelessness.

    For more info please see www.brisbanezero.org.au

  • + - Dandenong Zero

    What is Dandenong Zero?

    The Dandenong Zero Project started in July 2022 and is a collaboration between the Greater Dandenong City Council and Launch Housing. It brings together the local service system around a 'By Name List' (BNL) of all people sleeping rough, to support them with referrals to services with the objective of ending rough sleeping.

    What is the goal of Dandenong Zero?

    The goal of Dandenong Zero is to achieve Functional Zero homelessness for people sleeping rough in the City of Greater Dandenong.

    Functional Zero homelessness will be reached when the number of people entering and experiencing rough sleeping within a month is less than the average 6-monthly placement rate into long-term housing. Once achieved, it must be sustained, and any future experiences of rough sleeping in Greater Dandenong should be brief, rare, and non-recurring.

    The aim is to ensure that housing and support resources are efficiently coordinated and sufficient to meet the needs of all people who sleep and live in the City of Greater Dandenong. It is an ambitious but necessary goal, and we believe that by setting these targets, we will collectively get the best out of ourselves and our community, securing the housing and support needed to end homelessness and providing the opportunity and hope for all to live and thrive in our municipality.

    Who are our partners?

    • City of Greater Dandenong
    • Launch Housing
    • WAYSS
    • Victoria Police
    • Monash Health
    • Eastern Region Mental Health Association
    • The Salvation Army
    • Australian Red Cross
    • Windana
    • Wintringham
    • Cornerstone
    • Asylum Seeker Resource Centre
    • Centre for Multicultural Youth
    • Bolton Clarke
    • The Avalon Centre
    • Melbourne City Mission
    • Australian Community Support Organisation
    • Ngwala Willumbong
    • Department of Families, Fairness and Housing
    • Southern Homelessness Network
    • Housing Victoria
    • Department of Justice and Community Safety

    What is a By Name List (BNL)?

    The project centres around a 'By Name List' (BNL). Through outreach, people experiencing homelessness are engaged with and, with consent, are added to the list. Through our combined resources, we provide support to the person in accessing a long-term pathway out of crisis and back into stable housing, one person at a time.

    Want to know more about Dandenong Zero?

    If you want to know how we are progressing, take a look at our website and monthly data dashboard.

    Contact us:

    communitysafety@cgd.vic.gov.au

  • + - Geelong Zero

    The Geelong Zero Project brings together local organisations to reduce homelessness in the Geelong region and end rough sleeping by 2025.

    Through a Collective Impact approach and an evidence-based strategy, we are working in partnership to ensure that homelessness is rare, brief and a one-time occurrence.

    Run in partnership, Geelong Zero is supported by Neami National, Give Where You Live Foundation, the Australian Alliance to End Homelessness, and the City of Greater Geelong.


    For more information visit : https://www.neaminational.org.au/what-we-do/social-innovation/geelong-zero-project/

    or contact: geelongzero@neaminational.org.au

  • + - Gold Coast Zero

    Ending homelessness on the Gold Coast is possible. By working together, the Gold Coast Community can achieve net zero rough sleeping.

    The Advance to Zero is a campaign being run by a national collection of communities and organisations that are committed to ending all homelessness, starting with rough sleeping. In order to achieve it we will:

    • Engage, work with and train the Gold Coast community to know the people who are rough sleeping by name, as well as their needs
    • Work together to produce quality data to track progress in successfully housing people
    • Nominate people for the appropriate supply of housing and coordinate wrap around support services
    • Move people into housing and support them to stay housed
    • Ensure rough sleeping homelessness is rare, brief and a non-recurring experience for individuals and families

    For more information visit: https://www.gchomelessnessnetwork.com/gold-coast-zero-campaign

  • + - Logan Zero

    Logan Zero is unlocking systems to end homelessness. Working together we can eliminate homelessness in Logan. It will take collaboration, good data, a focus on the individual and action by decision makers.

    The Logan Advance to Zero campaign is an initiative to end homelessness and rough sleeping in the Logan region through a coordinated, collaborative and person-centered approach.

    Together we can prove that homelessness is solvable.

    For more info visit the Logan Zero website.

    To get in touch with the Logan Advance to Zero team, fill out the contact form, email loganzero@yfs.org.au or call 07 3826 1500 and ask for the Logan Zero team.

  • + - Melbourne Zero

    Launch Housing is committed to housing every person sleeping rough in Melbourne: to reach Melbourne Zero.

    When more people move off the streets into housing than those turning up on the streets as newly homeless. Zero homelessness. Everyone housed.

    Any number of people sleeping rough in Melbourne is too many. Homelessness has lasting, traumatic impact on lives and grave costs to society and the economy.

    It is Launch Housing’s mission to end homelessness and we’re going to start where we live. We know how to end homelessness on Melbourne’s streets and have the unique expertise to do this.

    How?

    1. Create and use By-Name Lists
      Adopting a By-Name List approach means we will know the name of every individual sleeping rough in a particular local government area and ultimately across greater Melbourne. This will create ‘a single point of truth’ about an individual and what their needs are, for use in co-ordinating access to health and rapid housing support.
    2. Provide the right services the first time
      Many vulnerable people with high needs have often been let down by services before. By getting people the right services as soon as possible we minimise the risk of them ‘falling through the cracks’.
    3. Scale out what works
      We need more flexible crisis and short term accommodation to stabilise a person’s immediate crisis, support a pathway to stable housing and provide trauma informed support to address the damage of their experience of homelessness. This includes scaling out Education First Youth Foyers and permanent supportive housing models such as Elizabeth Street Common Ground.
    4. Build more social and affordable housing
      Ultimately, we can only end rough sleeping in Melbourne if we have enough good quality affordable social and affordable housing. Supporting people is vital, but so is a clear pathway into housing to give people a sense of purpose as they start to rebuild their lives.

    For more info, please see: Melbourne Zero: Creating a liveable city for everyone.

  • + - NSW End Street Sleeping Collaboration

    End Street Sleeping Collaboration is a collective impact project that aims to halve rough sleeping across NSW by 2025 and work toward ending it by 2030.

    Signatories to the Joint Commitment to End Street Sleeping include the Premier of NSW, the homelessness sector’s leading NGOs, City of Sydney and peaks. Collaborators include local governments, philanthropists, homelessness sector NGOs and the Department of Communities and Justice.

    End Street Sleeping Collaboration is a not-for-profit organisation specifically established to lead the collaborative effort, to deliver on our commitment and reach our target to halve street sleeping across NSW by 2025 and end it altogether by 2030.

    Through data-driven planning and a focus on prevention, our aim is to help drive public system reforms, reshape homelessness services and assist thousands who, due to poverty, disadvantage, illness and hardship, need our help NOW more than ever before. Join the collaboration today.

    Together, street sleeping is solvable.

    For more info, please see: endstreetsleeping.org

  • + - Port Phillip Zero Project

    Homelessness is a shared challenge. Working together, we can achieve more than each working alone.

    Recognising this, we have partnered with a number of local agencies and services to create Port Phillip Zero.

    How did Port Phillip Zero begin?
    This partnership was initiated in September 2017 when the CEOs of local government, health and social service organisations came together to identify opportunities to reduce rough sleeping in the City of Port Phillip.

    Port Phillip Zero aims to achieve this though collective impact, providing support and appropriate, secure, affordable long-term housing to all individuals who are sleeping without housing in our patch.

    What does this mean?
    Rough sleeping homelessness is not a problem that any one council, program or organisation can solve on its own. Port Phillip Zero is a collaborative, community-wide approach that brings health and homelessness organisations, state government, police, housing providers, lived experience experts, businesses, philanthropy and residents together to identify opportunities and take collective action to create new housing and reduce rough sleeping.

    The organisations involved in Port Phillip Zero are creating a roadmap that will inform a coordinated scope of activities, programs and services to reduce rough sleeping in our City.

    What are some of the coordinated actions Port Phillip Zero has planned?

    • Outreach to individuals who are sleeping rough.
    • Targeted response to rough sleeping ‘hotspots’ in our municipality, bringing people together to create a shared response to amenity issues.
    • Supporting individuals who are sleeping rough through service coordination meetings, bringing people from a range of agencies together to ensure the best possible response and support for individuals who are sleeping rough.
    • Creation and maintenance of the By-Name List, our tool for accurate and reliable data that allows us to know by name who is sleeping rough in our municipality, so we can provide the best possible support and housing to them.

    Which organisations make up Port Phillip Zero?

    • City of Port Phillip
    • St Kilda Police
    • Department of Health and Human Services
    • Alfred Health
    • Launch Housing
    • Sacred Heart Mission
    • Salvation Army
    • Star Health
    • Housing First
    • St Kilda Community Housing
    • Wellways
    • Justice Connect
    • First Step
    • Wintringham
    • Ngwala

    What does collective impact mean?
    Collective impact is where a range of groups from different sectors agree to co-operate and work together to solve a common and complex problem. The Collective Impact Forum describes four key features of collective impact programs:

    • a common agenda
    • shared measurement
    • mutually reinforcing activities
    • continuous communication.

    What is a functional zero model?
    Functional zero rough-sleeping in the City is where the number of people who enter rough sleeping each fortnight is no greater than the number of people who are housed and supported each fortnight.

    How will you measure homelessness?
    An important component of Port Phillip Zero is the By Name List, which allows us to know the number of people rough sleeping in ‘real time’. The list is updated fortnightly and means that we can identify and work with all people who are rough sleeping in the City at a given point in time. It is a shared measurement tool that monitors service delivery, tracks trends and outcomes, identify system barriers, allocates responsibility for finding solutions for people, and informs system improvements.

    How can I help?
    You can help by letting us know if you come across someone who is sleeping rough, this will enable us to follow up with them on outreach to offer care and support. Let us know by calling ASSIST 03 9209 6777.

  • + - WA Alliance to End Homelessness

    On any given night in Western Australia, around 9,000 people can be considered to be homeless. Across the world many communities, cities, and states have committed to ending homelessness and they are winning. We can do the same here in Western Australia, and there is a ten-year strategy to guide us.

    The WA Alliance To End Homelessness is comprised of a group of individuals and organisations that have come together to end homelessness in Western Australia.

    Following an 18-month community consultation and engagement, the Alliance developed the WA Strategy to End Homelessness, collectively developed by representatives from homelessness services, people experiencing homelessness, service funders, and members of our community.

    This Strategy seeks to provide a framework to inform the process of ending homelessness, and providing signposts for action. It is intended to act as a blueprint - replicable in terms of processes, and guidance in terms of approach.

    The Alliance encourages other communities and stakeholders to use the Strategy, to align and create a combined effort across Western Australia to reach the goal of ending homelessness by 2028.

    Our plan includes 5 key focus areas:

    1. Housing - ensure adequate and affordable housing

    2. Prevention - focus on prevention and early intervention

    3. Strong and Coordinated Approach - no 'wrong-door system'

    4. Data, Research and Targets - improve data and research, and set clear targets

    5. Build Community Capacity - never about us, without us

    View the detailed Strategy here.

    Have questions or would like to be involved? We'd love to hear from you! Contact us at info@waaeh.org.au.

  • + - WA Zero Project

    At the WA Zero Project we advocate for the sector to transition to a Housing First system where people who are rough sleeping or experiencing chronic homelessness gain immediate access to a safe, permanent, self-contained home suited to their cultural and social needs. We are part of the national and global Advance to Zero movement, following the lead of other communities who have achieved functional zero homelessness. Our Zero Project WA communities aim to end rough sleeping in Perth and the regions by 2025, aligning with the Department of Communities 10 Year Strategy to End Rough Sleeping by 2025. We understand that success comes from collective impact and using data to inform our discussions and decisions.

    How we'll end rough sleeping and chronic homelessness:

    • Achieve a quality by-name list
    • Line up affordable housing
    • Provide on-going support
    • Connect people to the community

    For more information visit the WA Zero Website.

    To get in touch with the Zero Project team please email us at dl-zeroproject@ruah.org.au and we will get back to you.