Abstract for: Reaching the Vanguard target for reducing homelessness: Leveraging administrative data and systems modelling and simulation

Homelessness is a complex and persistent problem facing communities across the developed and developing world. In 2019, the New South Wales (NSW) Government became a signatory to a global agreement (the Vanguard Agreement of the ‘Act to End Street Sleeping Alliance’) committing to halving street homelessness across NSW by 2025. However, knowing how best to achieve this target is challenged by the complexity of the problem. There are a range of individual and structural factors that interact to drive rates of homelessness including housing and labour markets, household income, domestic and family violence, incarceration, mental health, substance abuse, and intergenerational disadvantage. There are also a broad range of options for intervening but uncertainty about where best to target programs, at what scale they should be implemented, and what combination of programs and services are likely to work best together to halve homelessness over the next 5 years. The process of model development included qualitative mapping of the key pathways to street homelessness in the NSW context; and quantification, testing and validation of the computational model drew on available data, and the expert knowledge of the DCJ core model building team