By Christian-Paul Stenta, Head of Impact, Policy & Government Relations, Launch Housing
Pierre’s story, featured in our 2026 Insights Paper, From Rough Sleeping to Sustained Housing, shows why housing with wraparound support is so important in helping people stay housed.
After many years sleeping rough in Melbourne’s outer south, Pierre connected with Launch Housing’s Rough Sleepers Initiative. Outreach workers met him where he was and offered flexible, personalised support, without requiring him to navigate services that did not feel right for him.
After waiting more than ten years for social housing, Pierre was offered a property. Moving in was an important step, but settling took time. Support continued from the offer and signing up process through to furnishing the property. When Pierre returned to sleeping rough for a period, his workers stayed connected and continued to provide consistent, non-judgemental support. He reflects that this was particularly important in the days and weeks after he found a home. Like many people who have experienced rough sleeping, moving into a home was a major life change.
Eighteen months on, Pierre is still in his house and continues to receive flexible support to manage his health, maintain his housing and navigate life after homelessness.
MJ’s experience, also featured in the paper, highlights another key factor: the suitability of housing matters. She accepted a property because the alternative was continuing to sleep rough, but she has not always felt safe there. Outreach and tenancy support have remained important as she works to address maintenance concerns and explore a transfer to a more suitable home.
Pierre’s and MJ’s experiences bring one of the Insights Paper’s central messages to life: receiving a housing offer is not the same as ending someone’s homelessness. What happens before, during and after that offer helps determine whether the housing is suitable, whether the person feels safe and settled, and whether the tenancy can be sustained.
When housing, support and services work together, people can find a home, stay housed and build the life they want.
This principle sits at the heart of Housing First and underpins the findings of Launch Housing’s 2026 Insights Paper, From Rough Sleeping to Sustained Housing. The paper argues that ending rough sleeping requires a connected response: people need to be reached through assertive outreach, have a genuine pathway into suitable housing and receive the ongoing support needed to sustain it over time.
The paper brings together lived experience, frontline insight, service data and the wider evidence base to understand how housing pathways work in practice, where barriers emerge and what supports lasting housing outcomes. Together, these perspectives point to five connected reforms focused on shared outcomes, housing access, assertive outreach, supported housing supply and stronger local coordination.
This is a timely message. Continued Housing First investment and major housing commitments by state and federal governments provide strong foundations for a more integrated and effective response. The challenge now is turning that policy, investment and program momentum into a system-wide Housing First response that reliably delivers for people sleeping rough.
The opportunity is clear: align policy and investment so people sleeping rough are reached earlier, have a clear pathway into a suitable home and can access support for as long as it is needed.
Because when housing comes first, everything else becomes possible.
Read more in our latest Insights Paper.
Cover art supplied by Craig Ivory.
