Collaborate for Change

Advancing housing justice in the Barwon region

What is Collaborate for Change?

Collaborate for Change: Advancing Housing Justice in Regional Victoria is a two‑year project bringing together the six regional, rural and remote community legal centres in Victoria to respond to the unique housing justice challenges faced by the 25 per cent of Victorians who live outside metropolitan areas.

In the Barwon region, we are leading local engagement across Greater Geelong, Queenscliff, the Surf Coast and Colac Otway regions. Through the project, we will be working alongside community organisations, service providers and people with lived experience to better understand the barriers to housing justice in our region — we will identify local solutions to local problems and develop a collaborative action plan to show what is working, what isn’t, and where change and investment are needed.

By strengthening connections between legal assistance, housing services and the broader community sector, Collaborate for Change aims to improve access to support, build clearer referral pathways, and create more effective and locally responsive solutions to housing injustice.

Why this project matters

The Barwon region is facing a serious and escalating housing crisis. Like many regional, rural and remote communities, people in Barwon experience specific and compounding barriers to safe, secure and affordable housing.

Key challenges in our region include:

• severe cost‑of‑living pressures, isolation and limited public transport reducing housing options
• extremely low rental vacancy rates and intense competition for homes
• discrimination in tight rental markets
• mortgage stress
• shortages of crisis accommodation, temporary, public and social housing
• climate-related disasters placing whole communities at risk
• systemic barriers faced by migrants and refugees, First Nations communities, young people, older people, queer and gender diverse people, people leaving prison, people experiencing family violence, and people with mental health concerns.

Housing stress amplifies other pressures in people’s lives — including financial hardship, health issues and family violence — and increases the risk of homelessness. While new housing initiatives are underway in the region, demand continues to outpace supply.

These challenges cannot be solved by any one organisation or sector alone. They require local collaboration, shared knowledge and coordinated, targeted responses.

Building on local knowledge and evidence

Collaborate for Change draws on current research and data, including Deakin University in partnership with Give Where You Live Foundation’s recent report Home Truths – Local Insights into Homelessness. Home Truths highlighted the need for stronger local collaboration and information sharing across the housing and homelessness system.

This project delivers on some of the Home Truths’ recommendations while expanding the scope beyond Greater Geelong to the wider Barwon region, and beyond homelessness alone to consider the full spectrum of housing insecurity. This includes issues such as rental discrimination, rental and mortgage stress, and the ways housing intersects with family violence, mental health and other systemic barriers.

By combining evidence, lived experience and regional partnerships, Collaborate for Change seeks to strengthen how housing justice is understood and responded to at a local level.

What the project will deliver

Across the two years of Collaborate for Change, the Barwon component of the project will:

• engage extensively with local stakeholders and people with lived experience of housing insecurity
• map housing related legal and support services across the Barwon region to identify gaps, overlaps and opportunities for stronger coordination
• support regional collaboration and information sharing to improve pathways between legal help, housing support and community services
• share insights with decision-makers through a regional housing summit planned for 2027, bringing together government and sector leaders to understand regional housing challenges and priorities.

Read more about the project here.

Project partners

Collaborate for Change is a partnership between:

The project is funded by the Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner’s Advancing Housing Justice Change Grant program.