The Food Solutions Team, Jamisontown.
THE Minns Labor Government has announced it will invest $30.4 million in a new Crisis Intervention package to ensure more vulnerable people can access homelessness services and find a safe place to live.
The 2025-26 NSW Budget includes:
• $20 million to expand existing crisis and transitional housing, delivering more beds and frontline support across NSW to help people in urgent need.
• $10.4 million over four years for the Bill Crews Foundation
“This package gives homelessness services breathing room now, while we roll out the long-term fix: more public housing and more affordable homes, especially for victim-survivors of family and domestic violence,” a statement from the NSW Government read.
“This immediate support in the 2025-26 Budget builds on the Government’s historic $6.6 billion Building Homes for NSW Program. This included a $527 million injection to expand homelessness services.
“The Government will prioritise over 50 per cent of new homes built for women and children fleeing family and domestic violence. Right now, more than 2,400 households are supported in hotel-style temporary accommodation each night, and 4 in 10 people seeking homelessness support are turned away.
“The Minns Labor Government is prioritising spending money on building homes for people in need.
“The 2025-26 Budget will give services the opportunity to deliver more stable, supported options while we get on with the job of building more homes across NSW.”
Nepean News spoke with Martin Beckett, CEO of Christ Mission Possible about the funding announcement and to get a gauge on how things are here in Penrith.
“Any additional Government funding to support vulnerable people experiencing homelessness is always warmly welcomed,” Martin said.
“Here at the coalface in Penrith, Mt Druitt and the Greater Western Sydney region we serve, we’ve been observing a sustained increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness and severe food-insecurity due to extreme cost-of-living pressures and other socio-economic factors.
“To illustrate how dire things are becoming, Food Solutions, our free food service that operates from our food distribution hub in Jamisontown, is now feeding over 20,000 people every week across the Penrith, Blacktown and Blue Mountains LGAs. These people now literally rely on our service to survive.”
“We’re seeing record numbers of people presenting to our warehouse door for free fresh food hampers every day of the week, and a large increase in the number of people attending our free-food pop-up shops across Penrith and Mt Druitt.”
“Through Food Solutions we’re now delivering more than 2,500 free school lunches to children across Greater Western Sydney every week because their parents simply can’t afford to prepare them a lunch; that’s how bad it’s become. If a child isn’t getting breakfast and isn’t getting lunch, which is a very common occurrence, then it means they’re not learning because they can’t concentrate. This can then create behavioural issues, and then other negative patterns can start to emerge. Record numbers of schools are contacting us wanting to be put on the list for our free-school-lunch ‘Brown Paper Bag’ service, because they’re watching this become such an issue every day in the classroom.”
“We’re also seeing strong sustained attendance at the free hot breakfasts we serve at street-level in the Penrith CBD on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, with large increases in the number of people telling us they’re homeless or on the cusp of becoming homeless.
“Age, sex, marital status and professional background don’t discriminate either. We see people from all walks of life and backgrounds presenting to our services who are severely struggling. Quite often, those who have been receiving free food from us for a while will then present at Housing Solutions, our large Temporary Accommodation operation in the heart of Penrith that provides a short-term solution for individuals and families experiencing homelessness. Every night of the year, we have approximately 200 people from all walks of life bedding down in our Housing Solutions apartment buildings while they work to search for and secure a permanent place to live.
“We’ve been doing this work for over 15 years now, and we’ve never seen the demand for our services this high. Our heart is to help break the cycle for these people and work with them to transform their lives, but continuing to meet this growing demand with limited funding is a constant challenge — our free food service in particular receives no Government funding and relies solely on donations through fundraising.
“If anyone wants to learn more about what we do, or would like to donate to help us serve vulnerable people and save lives across Greater Western Sydney, they can visit www.cmp.org.au.”
