Quick exit
In recognition of the ongoing housing crisis throughout rural and regional Victoria, we are proud to be a key partner in the statewide Collaborate for Change project. As one of six regional and rural Community Legal Centres working on the project, we are leading local engagement to shine a light on how the housing crisis is manifesting in the Greater Geelong, Queenscliff, the Surf Coast, and Colac Otway regions.
According to the latest data, the housing crisis in Barwon is profound and escalating. Between 30 June and 31 December 2025, there was a 22.5% increase in demand for public and community housing in our region, with more than half of the demand for placement in the Geelong district alone.
The recent Give Where You Live Foundation and Deakin University research report, Home Truths, highlighted how homelessness in the City of Greater Geelong has surged over 51% between 2016 and 2021. Through Collaborate for Change frontline workers in Geelong, the Bellarine and Colac confirm that this trend is continuing, which is expected to be validated in this year’s Census.
Deakin’s HOME Research Centre, responsible for Home Truths, are also a partner in Collaborate for Change, working closely with key stakeholders in each region to undertake Deakin’s Systems Thinking in Community Knowledge Exchange (STICKE) application. This process will produce maps identifying the systems impacting housing justice as well as opportunities to strengthen service co-ordination and advocate for evidence-based investment across regional, rural and remote communities.
Our lawyers commonly advise clients on housing and tenancy issues such as rental discrimination, notices to vacate, rent increase and arrears, bond issues, and housing quality and maintenance. In 2025, 28% of our clients were experiencing or at risk of homelessness.
Our CEO Bryanna Connell says:
“Housing is often the root cause of many legal issues and is shaped by a wide range of factors, including family violence, family law, financial disadvantage and discrimination. While we work within the legal system to help tenants protect their rights and reduce rental stress, the Collaborate for Change project allows us to work on the system itself, mapping local solutions to the housing crisis that affects our clients every day.”
These broad experiences of rental stress also highlight that while legal issues are strongly related to homelessness, legal need around housing and tenancy is complex and multifaceted, often co-occurring with family violence and other intersectional characteristics.
Our Tenancy lawyer Caleb says:
“In a rental market where affordability is disappearing and standards are slipping our strength is collaboration. Our community team and Collaborate for Change Coordinator actively build bridges across local services, ensuring clients can access every available resource to stabilise their housing and wellbeing. Alongside this, our financial counsellor works with households under pressure, tackling rental arrears and utility debt through practical budgeting support, often making the difference between eviction and stability, especially for families with children.
“With public housing waitlists stretching for years and even full‑time workers unable to afford local rents, the housing crisis now reaches far beyond social security recipients. Together, we don’t just respond to crisis, we keep people housed, secure, and heard.
“As a tenancy lawyer, my role is to turn rights into real outcomes. I support clients to assert their legal protections, hold rental providers accountable, challenge sub‑standard conditions, and prevent unfair evictions under the legislation.”
Our Collaborate for Change Coordinator Massimo (pictured above) has spent the first months of 2026 engaging with housing stakeholders and advocates across Barwon to build a picture of the local housing crisis. This includes intensifying rental and mortgage stress, challenges seeking temporary, community or public housing, discrimination in the private rental market, people experiencing homelessness, and everything in between.
Massimo is taking the lead in collaborating with local organisations and people with lived experience to identify the systems that impact housing justice in each region, which will lead to the development of an action plan to implement localised solutions.
“I grew up on Wadawurrung Country around Geelong and the Surf Coast – it’s such a special area. No one should be priced out of the community that they’re from or hold dear, but sadly that’s what we’ve been seeing for a long time across our region. I’m hoping that Collaborate for Change can make a positive contribution to housing policy reform and justice, to ensure that our region can continue to be home for all of our community for generations to come.”
Through Collaborate for Change, Massimo will work closely with other project coordinators to advocate for housing justice for regional and rural communities in Barwon and statewide.
We also host Collaborate for Change Project’s Impact and Evaluation Lead, Monica, who works across the six regional community legal centres helping to analyse the impact of the project’s local and statewide collaboration. Monica works closely with the Project Lead and coordinators to ensure the project’s objectives are met and its outcomes are measured and evaluated for impact.
Collaborate for Change will develop strong evidence of the picture of housing justice in Barwon and more broadly, across regional and rural Victoria. Given the current increases in cost of living and the well-documented housing crisis, this project could not be more timely.
Read more about the Collaborate for Change project here and stay tuned for more posts about the project as it develops.
The project is funded by the Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner’s Advancing Housing Justice Change Grant program.
