How can you help?If you would like to offer assistance or make a donation, please contact the Parish Centre on 9826 9677. email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it To see our EHASS brochure click here. For details on volunteering with any of the outreach programs, you can download the booklet: To see our Community Outreach Services Booklet click here. To see our Policies and Procedures Manual OUTREACHST. JOSEPH'S EMERGENCY HOUSING ASSOCIATION
St Joseph’s Emergency Housing Association was formed in 1998 with the aim of transforming one of the old parish school buildings into transitional accommodation for homeless people waiting for public housing who have nowhere to go in the meantime. The Association raised the necessary funding through parish and private donations and from philanthropic trusts. In 2001, the first four units were opened and another six in 2004; they are fully furnished and equipped. The aim is to provide safe, clean, and affordable housing to people in need, regardless of race, religion, age or gender. One unit is reserved for an asylum-seeker.
People come to the units from many different cultural backgrounds – over the years they have housed people from Bosnia, China, Vietnam, Sudan, Iran, Turkey, Korea, Angola, Greece, Colombia, Egypt, as well, of course, as Australian-born. They come for many different reasons – often forced into crisis accommodation by family break-up, health issues, loss of employment, sudden crises, immigration problems. Their stay in the units gives them the time and the security to make application for public housing as well as to deal with other problems in their lives. Most of them move eventually into public housing.
The Association is run entirely by volunteers. Although the selection of tenants and the collection of rent (pegged, as for public housing, at one quarter of whatever pension they are on) is done by a professional Community Housing agency, the Association maintains the overall financial responsibility for the project. Our volunteers clean the public areas of the building on a weekly roster, clean each unit after the departure of one family and prepare it for the next, welcome each tenant personally and generally provide a human face to the enterprise. Over the past couple of years, we have been helped in the cleaning work by students from Melbourne Grammar School. The volunteers also organise Christmas hampers for all tenants and an annual sausage sizzle for them, as well as an annual fund-raising film night. THE HAVEN UNITS SOUTH YARRA
The former Convent Building in Fitzgerald Street, opposite St. Joseph''s Church was not fully utilised for some years after the Presentation Sisters vacated it. It was the vision of the former Parish Priest, Fr. John Barry that the building be used to support those living with mental illness. In 2009 the Parish entered a partnership with the Haven Foundation and Housing Choices Australia which saw the Parish provide a 40 year nominal lease on the building. This partnership was necessary because the Parish itself was unable to provide finance for the building's conversion. The Haven Foundation secured a State Government grant of $3 million to convert the convent building into 14 independent living units to provide long term housing for those living with mental illness. The project is administered by Prahran Mission, bringing a long held dream for safe, secure, affordable housing one step closer for fourteen individuals. The Haven Units provides fully self contained units with on site staff, administration and many related support services. The residents of the Haven are supported by a 24-7 presence of staff and carers. The Parish is extremely pleased that a once empty building now has a new life as much needed accommodation. For more details of the project visit the Haven South Yarra website.
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