When the emergency and social housing system in Western Victoria can’t cope - which is all of the time - people are sent to hotels and motels.
“We've got families of six sleeping in a one-bedroom hotel room because that's the only facility that we can open for them,” Kerriann Campbell-Jones told the Brolga.
Campbell-Jones is CEO of Western Victoria’s Sexual Assault and Family Violence Centre.
Motel rooms substituting for a stable family home might temporarily put people into a warm bed and out of harm’s way, but they’re also a symbol of a state that is unable to handle the surge in demand for housing for people fleeing violence or living on low incomes.
A snapshot: The latest data, from March, put the number of people in the Ballarat region on the waitlist for housing at 2,876, across priority and register of interest (non-crisis) applications.
In Warrnambool, there were 1,077, and in Portland 400, Colac 390, Hamilton 273 and Camperdown 248.
Leaving at a cost: The motel “solution”, when nothing else is available, means parents can be left trying to manage their kids in a confined space without the comforts of home.
It may also include having to find new schools or transport routes, while navigating the housing system, community services and, potentially, a police investigation and court case.
“When one person leaves [a motel], there’s somebody else already waiting to go in,” Campbell-Jones said.
But the waiting list for social housing can leave people - often at their lowest ebb - trapped in a cycle of couch surfing, living out of motel rooms or a car, or sleeping rough around their community. And motels aren’t always enthusiastic about receiving guests who may be in distress.
Local impacts: Campbell-Jones witnesses this cycle regularly.
“People today are at risk. People today are sleeping in their cars. People today are the ones being harmed on the streets, in their homes,” she said. “Some people go back. That’s not a failure of courage on their part, it’s a failure of supply.”
Deeper issues: Statewide, close to two thirds of new applicants are approved for a one-bedroom dwelling, trading one risk for another.
“People without stable accommodation are exposed to staying with or returning to someone who's actually harming them because there's nowhere else for them to go,” Campbell-Jones said.
The CEO said refuge services the SAVF Centre offers for crisis accommodation are designed to hold a family for weeks while a longer term home is found.
“When that home does not exist, the family stays, and a bed that cannot be freed is not there for the family who needs it next. The blockage is at the exit, not the front door,” Campbell-Jones says.
How it works: Crisis accommodation is short-term housing offered to people at immediate risk of homelessness or people already sleeping rough, while social housing is long-term placement in a government-owned home for people on low incomes who struggle to secure housing in the private rental market.
There are income and asset limits to be eligible for social housing.
A single person can earn up to $1,194 a week, couples with no children have a limit of $1,826, families (either one or two parents) with one or two dependent children can earn up to $2,461 a week and each additional dependent child increases that limit by $399.
There are no set requirements for eligibility to access crisis accommodation - each case is based on the immediate situation and is up to the service offering assistance.
The housing stock: Victoria currently has about 86,000 social housing dwellings.
In April, the state government announced an $860 million investment to build an additional 7,000 social homes in the next decade.
The demand: As of March this year, the total number of applicants on the Victorian Housing Register climbed to 57,372 people statewide - up from 55,553 in March 2025.
Wait times for priority access applicants - people with special needs or leaving family violence situations - reached an average of 19.5 months in 2023-24 - the government's target was 10.5 months.
The data now covers priority and general social housing together, and the average wait time is currently 17.4 months.
Regional solutions: The SAFV Centre is calling for sustained, regionally-weighted supply, family-sized homes instead of one-bedroom stock, and a system where the person who caused the harm is the one expected to leave a property.
“We have built a family violence system that is very good at getting a woman through the worst night of her life,” she said. “What we have not built is somewhere for her to live afterwards. Until that changes, every other part of the response is holding a door open into nothing.
“We have to make sure people are fed, safe, and have shelter before we can do anything else for these families.”