For Theodore, it’s the little things: watching the AFL on the couch, cooking a green curry, closing the front door of the small community apartment he rents in Coburg, knowing he is safe.
“It’s the first time in three years I’ve lived anywhere,” he says.
Teo, as he likes to be called, has been homeless, living mostly out of a van in that time. He is 45 years old and six feet tall – a large presence with a soft voice.
“It was hard in the van. You can feel the cold of the earth go through you,” he says.
“I was just drifting … I was belligerent. I didn’t want to deal with anyone.
“It’s not where you want to be.”
Teo sits on a couch in a repurposed aged care home in Fitzroy in Melbourne’s inner north. It’s a unique facility, offering wraparound housing and healthcare for six months to those experiencing chronic homelessness. Teo says the place saved his life.
He’d been living in a rental and working as a labourer when a motorcycle accident left him with a compound fracture and unable to work. He couldn’t pay his rent so he bought a van, and that became his home.
Teo has stories to tell, wild stories. Once he was woken up in his van by the former professional surfer Layne Beachley. Another time, he held his breath in the middle of the night, hoping whoever was moving outside his van wouldn’t realise he was inside. He learned not to park around Stonnington or Kew – they were safe spots, but the police would always wake him and ask him to move on.
“It’s not 100% safe sleeping out,” he says. “There’s a lot going down at night, this city doesn’t sleep.”
After two and a half years on the road, pain developed around Teo’s ribs. The hospital found clots in both lungs. That’s when his case worker at St Vincent’s referred him to the Better Housing and Health program.
Since it began in 2022, 71 residents have passed through the program. There are 20 beds, 15 for men and five for women and gender-diverse folk. The residents are Melbourne’s most vulnerable – the long-term homeless, with complex health needs.
The majority – 62% – had been sleeping rough. Others came from prison, couch-surfing, unsafe boarding houses or hospitals. Most of the time, this place is their last option.
A safe place to catch their breath
Cheryl, a straight-shooting social worker, works the night shift. She says residents have “service fatigue”.
“Someone might be able to get three weeks here or a couple of nights here, but you are cycling through, and there’s not enough housing,” she says.
When people first come in, they often move their mattresses to the floor as they’re not used to sleeping so high off the ground, she says. Or they’ll build a cocoon around themselves with extra blankets. Some will take more pieces of fruit, or stockpile packets of coffee in their rooms. Many sleep light.
While six months might sound like a long time, the clock is ticking from the moment people walk in, Cheryl says.
The pressure of securing the right tenancy for someone is intense. “You really have to start working on that from day one,” she says. “Affordability is really, really tricky.”
Community and social housing is best because the other option is “substandard, overcrowded boarding houses”.
Many have been on the public housing register, she says. But if a property comes up, the Department of Fairness, Families and Housing will mail out an offer to the last address they have on record.
“If you’re not getting that mail, then you drop off the list,” she says.
Launch Housing helps residents find housing, and St Vincent’s focuses on the healthcare they need.
Cheryl says the program gives people “the dignity to take risks”. They can try therapy, they can try getting clean, they can catch their breath.
“It gives them long enough to stabilise,” she says, “and begin to thrive.”
‘These people wanted to help me’
In the common area, a tall man with a buzz cut and chiselled jawline introduces himself as “Harold” – he pauses – “Pinkleton, the second”. It’s not his real name – but he doesn’t want his past clinging to him.
Dressed in Nike runners and a big puffer jacket, the 41-year-old wouldn’t look out of place inside one of Fitzroy’s wine bars.
“I have been a heavy drug user since I was a child,” he says.
Harold has used heroin since he was 14. Later, he took up ice. He’s been to prison twice. The second time he says he got five years for an armed robbery that scored him just $50. His hands shake as he tells his story.
After he left prison, he started cycling through crisis accommodation. Suicidal and with a massive leg wound that wouldn’t heal, he ended up in hospital. From there, he was referred into the program.
“It’s like a gift from God,” he says. “Just knowing you have a bed, a fridge, a little kettle, a shower. Waking up in the morning and coming downstairs knowing there’s a meal there.”
After five months in the program, he was clean, had found God, had NDIS funding, and was on the waitlist to have surgery on his leg. He is now living in community housing.
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“For the first time in my life these people wanted to help me, and I’ve never had that,” he says.
‘A lot of disconnection, a lot of family breakdown’
Jackie heads the health team run by St Vincent’s. Each person in the program has complex health needs, she says, and is often very distrustful of the system. Getting someone to the GP can be a huge win.
People’s medical issues can be severe.
“The majority of people we’ve had through our program have some level of brain injury,” Jackie says.
“That’s a big thing that comes up.”
The program supports residents “when no one will take them” or because they are so mentally unwell, she says.
“We don’t have one person in our program who hasn’t got trauma.
“Considerable trauma, childhood trauma. We see quite a lot of that in the history of people we support. A lot of disconnection, a lot of family breakdown.”
Nearly 60% of the residents who went through the program between August 2022 and April 2024 went on to stable accommodation – social housing, hospital, rehab, palliative care or aged care.
The other 40% left the program early, of their own accord – sometimes people aren’t ready, sometimes they can’t live communally yet. Those went to emergency accommodation, to motels, or back to the streets.
Minh, whose name has been changed because she has escaped a violent husband, arrived straight from hospital. She developed severe sarcoidosis – a painful condition that affects her eyesight.
“It is very painful. I take Panadol but it doesn’t help much, it’s very sharp pain,” she says through a translator, because she has “difficulty explaining to people in English”.
She came into the program because St Vincent’s realised she was not safe at home.
Minh goes to the doctor and does her shopping on the other side of the city to avoid her ex-husband, who is still following her. When she talks about him, she rubs her palms together.
“I’m scared,” she says.
The program offered her community. Inside, she made necklaces and knitted beanies. It also linked her to a housing option, and she is now in long-term women’s accommodation and focusing on learning English.
Housing and health are linked, and homelessness is killing Australians. In Victoria, the state government does not keep records of homelessness deaths, according to a recent report from Launch Housing. The current gaps in the Victorian legislation mean homelessness deaths are not reported to the coroner, it says.
Upstairs in a small room that overlooks a car park, the heater is fighting off Melbourne’s cold winter. Kero is holding a brand new Lakers hoodie. A box from the streetwear store Foot Locker sits proudly in his wardrobe.
“I came in here with nothing,” Kero says. “Just the clothes on my back.”
He shows off a new cap he got for $2 at a second-hand store on Brunswick Street, and an Asics jumper.
“I had nothing,” he says again.
Life on the streets has left its mark. He’s lost some teeth; he is jumpy and nervous. He’s been in the program for almost six months, and is hoping for a housing outcome soon.
Kero had been living on the street in Dandenong, sleeping in abandoned houses or behind the Coles off the main street. He hasn’t had his own home since he moved from Perth to Melbourne eight years ago. He’s gone through the big names of Melbourne’s emergency accommodation and boarding houses.
Like Harold, Kero says he is now drug-free. He is on suboxone, a medicine that helps treat opioid addiction. He is also treating his diabetes, and the breaches of court which had been following him have been cleared.
Once he relaxes, he is all smiles. The jokes come fast. He feels confident he will find a home – he hopes it’s a new build.
“I don’t want to leave here until they help me out,” he says. “If it wasn’t for this place, you know, I’d probably be in jail again, I’m telling you.”