On any given night, Australia’s 122,000 homeless people are either sleeping rough outdoors, in their cars or couch surfing.
All while thousands of dormant and vacant public and commercial buildings across the country sit empty.
It is an irony not lost on Robert Pradolin, founder and executive director of.
“Like most Australians, I assumed that our governments were looking after our vulnerable people and I discovered that they weren’t,” he said.
“The more I learnt about it, the more I was scared for our future because we’re allowing homelessness to be normalised.”
Rob Pradolin says a culture of “compassionate capitalism” is in line with Australian values. (ABC Gippsland: Rachael Lucas)
Mr Pradolin, a former civil engineer, has spent the past decade rallying a growing number of like-minded “compassionate capitalists” from the private sector to donate their skills, labour and building supplies to an ever-growing slate of housing projects.
It became Housing All Australians (HAA), a national not-for-profit working with the private sector to repurpose dormant and vacant buildings into temporary or long-term housing for people at risk of homelessness.
“The first project we did in South Melbourne in 2016 with Metricon, their subcontractors refurbished 32 rooms of a 52-room facility,” he said.
“Over four years, YWCA helped over 140 women stabilise their lives — at no cost to government.”
Since then, HAA has gifted 100,000 nights of free accommodation to not-for-profit crisis accommodation providers by repurposing nine buildings across Australia, including a dormant convent, an aged care facility, hotel, and rooming house.
Mr Pradolin wants the public, private and community sectors to work together to find compromises and solutions to further issues such as zoning, permits, compliance and land tax.
Bridget House in bayside Victoria is one of HAA’s repurposed vacant building projects. (Supplied: Housing All Australians)
Pop-up housing in the regions
Mr Pradolin recently travelled to Victoria’s Gippsland region, in the state’s south-east, for a forum aimed at tackling growing levels of homelessness there.
Of the 64,117 households on Victoria’s statewide social housing waiting list, 7,520 are in Gippsland.
Quantum Support Services general manager and Gippsland Homelessness Network chair Mitchell Burney said the pandemic had accelerated an unprecedented homelessness situation.
This in a region already under-resourced with adequate emergency accommodation and outreach workers.
Rob Pradolin and Mitchell Burney discuss the potential for pop-up housing in Gippsland. (ABC Gippsland: Rachael Lucas)
With 3,644 households accessing homelessness services across Gippsland in 2024–25, Mr Burney said the actual number of homeless was likely to be double, as many people did not access services or did not know they existed.
He said there had been a 32 per cent increase in rough sleeping from 2023–24 across Gippsland, with 572 known rough sleepers living outdoors, in tents, under bridges or in their cars.
With a six-month wait for homelessness case management support in the Latrobe Valley, he said there was an urgent need for dormant buildings to be repurposed as pop-up housing across regional Victoria.
Community leaders from Gippsland’s Wellington shire recently gathered to discuss the housing and homelessness crisis. (ABC Gippsland: Rachael Lucas)
“At Quantum, we’re starting to see middle-income people and employed people coming through,” Mr Burney said.
“We have a real youth homelessness problem here in Gippsland as well.”
Besides single women over 55, he said men and women aged 26–44, some with small families, were also at risk.
“We’re seeing many more people in mortgage stress and rental stress because landlords are selling properties and [residents] can’t find another rental,” he said.
Regulation hitting supply
With median rents increasing by 50 per cent over the last five years, Sale-based real estate agent Lisa Wegener said she often referred clients to support services that could assist with bond, relocation and rental payments.
Lisa Wegener says a more compassionate approach is needed for clients in housing distress. (ABC Gippsland: Rachael Lucas)
She said she also worked with single women who may have had a relationship breakdown or situational change who were forced to confront a shortage of available rentals.
Ms Wegener would like to see more investor incentives created to encourage the construction of affordable one-bedroom rentals for single people on Centrelink incomes.
She said compliance legislation and land tax had forced small-time property investors out of the market and she had sold off 10 per cent of her rental roll.
“There’s just a lot more costs involved,” she said.
“Gas and electrical compliance checks, insurance is going up, everything’s gone up, and it’s just not viable for them to keep their investment property.
“This then means, unfortunately, there’s less rental properties on the market.”
The old Sale police station is one dormant building in town that has potential to be repurposed. (Supplied: Erin O’Neill)
In response, Sale has now been earmarked for a Housing All Australians project.
The organisation has put out a call to tradespeople, businesses, local councillors and commercial property owners to discuss the potential for creating a pop-up shelter from one of the shire’s numerous vacant buildings.
Housing, a socio-economic ecosystem
Mr Pradolin warned of a “lose-lose” scenario for the private sector, with disastrous socio-economic effects, if emergency, short-term and long-term affordable housing supply were not urgently addressed.
In his campaign to educate the private sector, Mr Pradolin said it was important to look at homelessness through an economic lens.
New housing supply will ultimately relieve pressure on housing prices and a tight rental market. (ABC Gippsland: Rachael Lucas)
“It starts with the lack of housing for essential workers,” he said.
“You push people out of an area because there is not enough housing supply to put downward pressure on price.
“What happens then when all our workers can’t live close to where they work?
“They’re living further and further away to a point where they’re so far away that they say, ‘I’m not going to come in’.
“This is a productivity issue for Australia.”
