Walking along two of St Kilda’s famous streets, Fitzroy and Acland, it is not uncommon to see doorway after doorway filled with blankets and people burrowed underneath, sleeping as best they can. This is the visible side of homelessness, not nearly showing the full scale of the crisis in this wealthy country.
These streets are in the City of Port Phillip, which consistently ranks among the Victorian local government areas (LGAs) with the highest homelessness rates. It is not the highest, though—that dubious honour goes to Greater Dandenong, in Melbourne’s outer east. And the crisis is found throughout Melbourne, and increasingly in regional cities and towns.
Homelessness extends far beyond rough sleepers to include people living in their cars, those in boarding houses, couch-surfers and other people with unstable, temporary accommodation. But it is those who shelter on the streets who we see, a visibility that offers some protection from predators but also makes it more difficult for others to ignore their situation.
Ahead of Social Justice Sunday on 31 August, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC) issued its annual social justice statement, as they have done since 1940, to encourage the Catholic community to reflect and act on the social dimension of the Church’s mission.
The 2025 statement focuses on those experiencing homelessness and mental ill-health. Don’t walk by, says ACBC president Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB; ‘offer loving friendship to those on the margins of society.’
The parish priest of St Columba’s in Elwood–St Kilda, Fr John Petrulis, engages directly with this reality, especially while ministering to people who use the services of Sacred Heart Mission, next door to one of the parish’s churches. ‘We see them as fellow citizens,’ he says. ‘We [see] their own unique humanity and ... we look at the circumstances that have brought people into homelessness. As a community, we really need to try and understand and alleviate those, and give all the support we can.’
Fr Petrulis is also the Episcopal Vicar for Social Services and Justice in the Archdiocese of Melbourne, and along with Sacred Heart Mission, the St Vincent de Paul Society Victoria and Catholic Social Services Victoria, he has been instrumental in raising the profile of the homelessness crisis in the City of Port Phillip. Earlier in the year, when the council was considering a proposal to deal with rough sleepers by moving them on, fining them or confiscating their belongings, the group rallied the community to speak up. The council made some concessions, although its community safety plan is still being debated. A draft report is due in September.
Our call is to be united in our response as social services and churches.
The sight of people sleeping on the streets is confronting, and it is easier—and, in truth, often feels safer—to look away. But the bishops’ statement urges a move beyond perception to understanding.
Fr Petrulis identifies substance abuse and mental illness as significant contributors to homelessness. He says a community becomes more supportive when it tries to understand the story of the person who’s living with mental illness and encourages compassion rather than punitive actions.
He also emphasises the complexity of the problem, as outlined in the social justice statement, noting homelessness is not a choice. ‘It’s a whole lot of factors,’ he says, ‘working to rob people of their freedom,’ notably domestic and family violence, cost-of-living increases and the woeful lack of social housing.
An effective response, he says, requires the kind of integrated approach encouraged by Social Justice Sunday. ‘Our call is to be united in our response as social services and churches, and... [advocate] for local government and wider government support.’ This unity is visible in Port Phillip, where services like those provided by the Salvation Army and St Kilda Community Housing work collaboratively with Catholic social services to offer practical support.
An obvious way to alleviate the homelessness crisis is through more social housing, and there are promises and plans at both state and federal government levels, but as Fr Petrulis notes, ‘houses don’t get built overnight.’
That could be my neighbour.
‘We are called to act as best we can in the tensions,’ he says in relation to how the wider community may feel when faced with rough sleepers. ‘It’s not a perfect world, of course, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still ways of developing a real, I suppose, patience. This is part of compassion: that while you’re waiting until the resources are there, you’ve got to live in the tension of it.’
‘We continue to show up,’ he says, underscoring the statement’s core message of a human being’s worth and dignity. ‘People in our community are of infinite value in our faith ... not just someone who’s become a burden.’
Fr Petrulis advocates getting to know the stories of people who are experiencing homelessness, and to be aware that their situation could happen to anyone.
‘Often a person who we see on the street has an extraordinary story of what’s brought them into homelessness that, we can all identify with if we get to know the person,’ he says. ‘And if we get to know the person, we wouldn’t be wanting to be punitive. We’d be wanting to say, “Well, that could be my family member, that could be my neighbour.”’
