The Housing Justice grant round is a priority themed Change Grants round designed to help more Victorians access and keep safe, secure housing. Applicants from the legal assistance sector were invited to develop projects in partnership, to better lead systemic reforms and effect real change.
We congratulate the more than 30 organisations who will share in $14 million in grants for 10 projects listed below, whose projects seek to have impact where it’s most needed, including for people with disability, renters and victim-survivors of family violence.
The Housing Justice grants round was a key recommendation from our 2024 report, Advancing housing justice: The opportunity for legal services to improve access to housing. Authored by consumer rights advocate and lawyer Gerard Brody, the report explores ways for collaboratively addressing the legal problems contributing to the growing housing crisis.
Justice Connect
$650,000 over 4 years
A voice at VCAT for renters and family violence victim-survivors
Justice Connect will extend its free, online self-help tools for Victorian renters, Dear Landlord and Home of Your Own, to help more Victorian renters successfully access, navigate and exit VCAT. Home of Your Own empowers renters facing family violence to safely and proactively avoid homelessness, while Dear Landlord guides those behind in rent or worried they might fall behind in rent, through their options, helping them to take action.
Mental Health Legal Centre
$1,000,000 over 3 years
Big builds and building big: housing with hope for people with psychosocial disabilities
Working in partnership with Mind Australia and in collaboration with other key services, this project seeks to address the issue of inappropriate housing for people with psychosocial disabilities. It aims to free them from compulsory mental health detention or long hospital stays for the lack of appropriate housing, and disentangle the regulatory and legal barriers to safe and supported housing. The project will provide services to individuals on a casework basis and lobby for change at a systems level.
The First Step Program
$300,000 over 3 years
First Step Legal and Launch Housing Health Justice Partnership (Road Home)
This project aims to address the underlying drivers of long-term homelessness that are beyond the remit of housing services, and to interrupt the interlinking cycles of homelessness and justice system contact. It will bring legal assistance to women experiencing homelessness and with multiple and complex needs, wherever they present for help: in health, housing or community service settings. Through proactive, assertive outreach, Road Home will help women tackle their problems earlier, supporting them to manage hearing dates and legal requirements and prevent the escalation of relatively minor matters that may otherwise lead to a custodial response.
Peninsula Community Legal Centre
$2,000,000 over 3 years
REACHHer pilot – Recover, empower, advocate, collaborate, house
This collaboration between Peninsula Community Legal Centre, Southside Justice, and South East Community Links will focus on supporting women who are fleeing family violence by integrating legal services, financial counselling and psychosocial supports to secure safe and sustainable housing. It will bring together community organisations and legal services to address debts, ensure fair property settlements, and meet the emotional and social needs of women and children. The project will include legal case management and specifically address complex legal issues where women need specialised and ongoing legal support. By addressing underlying financial and legal issues early on, this project seeks to prevent the rising number of older women experiencing homelessness.
Villamanta Disability Rights Legal Service
$1,000,000 over 3 years
Housing justice for people in disability accommodation
This project will work with people with disability in disability accommodation settings to address the legal and regulatory complexity they face. It will develop dedicated legal and self-advocacy assistance alongside evidence-based and co-designed recommendations for systematic change and law reform, identifying areas of unmet legal need and building capacity in the legal and non-legal sector to address that need.
Mortgage Stress Victoria
$1,300,000 over 3 years
Consumer protections, fair mortgages and housing security for homeowners in debt
This project will focus on promoting housing security for homeowners in debt, by championing legal consumer protections so that small debts do not escalate and force bankruptcy. It will provide services to individuals – with a focus on victim-survivors of family violence, over 55s and new Victorians – and then use that casework data to inform research and advocacy. Through analysis of casework data, it will expand the evidence base for these escalating problems with research and development of policy papers and reports.
Women’s Legal Service Victoria
$3,100,000 over 3 years
Safe settlements: Family law and housing justice
This project is a collaboration between four community legal centres – Women’s Legal Service Victoria, Westjustice, Barwon Community Legal Service and Brimbank Melton Community Legal Centre – which seeks to reduce the risk of women and children who have experienced family violence falling into insecure housing and homelessness. The collaboration aims to address this critical issue by providing legal assistance to victim-survivors of family violence, with a focus on Melbourne’s west and Geelong region. Alongside providing negotiation assistance to resolve property disputes, the project will build the evidence base on the important role of family law property assistance and secure further improvements to the family law property system.
Advocacy and Rights Centre
$2,700,000 over 2 years
Collaborate for change: Advancing housing justice in regional Victoria
This project unites the six regional, rural and remote community legal centres in Victoria to tackle the unique housing justice challenges faced by the 25 per cent of Victorians who live in these communities. Recognising gaps in existing statewide housing justice efforts, the collaboration aims to enhance service delivery by leveraging the combined capacity and capability of the centres and building on local, community sector partnerships to improve access to legal and complementary services. It will advocate for the needs of these communities and, through local and academic partnerships, build more effective, tailored responses to serve them.
Consumer Policy Research Centre
$1,000,000 over 3 years
Identifying, growing and championing best practice property management services
This project will identify, grow and champion best practice property management services for collaboration between Consumer Policy Research Centre (CPRC), Tenants Victoria, University of Melbourne and Real Estate Institute of Victoria (REIV). These partners will form a collaborative committee seeking to change the behaviour of property managers, so that more property managers offer best practice services beyond minimum legal standards. Collaborating with industry, community and academic leaders, the project aims to create a property management code of practice to help people who rent identify good property managers.
Centre for Innovative Justice at RMIT University
$950,000 over 2 years
Handing the keys to young people: Towards a youth-informed homelessness–justice partnership model
Through a partnership between Youthlaw, WestJustice and Melbourne City Mission, this project aims to directly improve access to housing and drive law reform for young people with interrelated experiences of family violence and homelessness, who have entered the homelessness system without a protective parent. This will culminate with the design and delivery of a homelessness–justice partnership model, which will seek to provide unaccompanied young people up to 25 with specialist, wraparound support to address both legal and non-legal barriers to accessing and maintaining housing. The project will also generate evidence and practice resources to inform system-wide improvements to support these young people to access and maintain housing.