In Victoria, more than 800,000 people were living in poverty at the time of the last census in 2021 – and conditions have worsened since.
On any given night, more than 30,000 Victorians have no safe place to sleep. One in three Victorian households experience food insecurity. And loneliness and social isolation are quietly compounding Victorians’ material problems. For the first time in history, projections suggest that the current generation of children will not live longer than the one before.
What connects these disparate challenges is a system that has not kept pace with need – and a community sector holding much of it together, often without the resources to do so sustainably.