Stories of Hope

Our dedicated homelessness team work tirelessly to achieve the best possible outcomes for our service users. Whether that be helping them into housing or providing mental health support, they give our community members hope, provide them with a sense of belonging, and help them to achieve their full potential.

Here are just a few Welcome Wins we’ve had recently:

  • Our community support workers recently helped a single mother and her two primary school aged children into housing, after they had been staying in an emergency motel and struggled to get support while navigating other access point homelessness services. We were able to help the family into housing less than a month after they came to us for assistance.

  • Our team was able to support another single mother with six children (two with disabilities) by referring her to family support services. The woman had previously struggled to receive support from other services and had been staying in a two-bedroom emergency hotel room.

  • Our community support workers helped a young male, who had been suffering from chronic alcoholism and was sleeping rough in the city, become housed at the Make Room project in Melbourne CBD. He says he has found new hope to turn his life around.

  • Our team have also recently supported women from non-English speaking backgrounds into Community Housing and to qualify for Centrelink payments. They were previously staying at a Family Violence Refuge in Fitzroy.

  • Our community support workers have also helped a long time Australian resident originally from New Zealand, who has been experiencing homelessness and has suffered from long term alcohol misuse. Our team helped him get his birth certificate from New Zealand, work towards becoming a permanent Australian resident and are continuing to support him in finding housing and work. He has also taken his first steps to becoming sober, and we are happy to report that he has made excellent progress!

Sharon and Phil’s* story

“After an incredibly frustrating battle to find housing, my husband and I are finally housed… thanks to the incredibly helpful staff at St Mary’s House of Welcome.

Upon walking in for lunch one day, we got talking to one of the staff. I explained that my husband and I were sleeping in the car due to exhausting the funding available through emergency housing, and the difficulty we were experiencing finding other options. Our car was also out of registration and had two broken windscreens, so it was extremely cold and attracting police attention, causing us more trouble.

Due to the knowledge of the team at SMHOW, we found there were a number of two-bedroom properties available in the local area that we could potentially access. Within a significantly short period of time, we were successfully offered a place.

In the month of waiting, SMHOW was instrumental in gaining an additional two weeks funded accommodation, which we had otherwise been unable to access and significantly reduced the number of nights we were forced to sleep in the car in the cold. Showers, food and genuine care and compassion from SMHOW got us through the toughest of our last few weeks of homelessness, and we are more than thankful for everything the SMHOW staff have done to help.”

We are incredibly proud of the work of all of our team members as they impact people's lives for the better each and every day.

If you would like to contribute to the work we do, please consider making a donation - all proceeds go towards the provision of vital services, including our Welcome Relief Meals program, mental health support, social inclusion programs, and the maintenance of our of shower and laundry facilities.