A regional collaboration to strengthen housing justice across Victoria’s regional, rural and remote communities.
Work funded through the Victorian Legal Services Board Grants Program.
About Collaborate for Change
Collaborate for Change: Advancing Housing Justice in Regional Victoria brings together Victoria’s six regional community legal centres to strengthen housing justice across regional, rural and remote communities.
Led by ARC Justice, the two-year project is building a stronger understanding of the different housing challenges facing regional communities and what needs to change.
Each participating community legal centre is leading work in its own region, working with local organisations, services and communities to understand what is happening on the ground and identify opportunities for change.
Deakin University’s HOME Strategic Research and Innovation Centre is the project’s research partner, helping to build a strong evidence base for the work. The research will look at what drives housing insecurity and makes it harder for people to access justice. It will examine how people’s individual circumstances, the places they live and broader systems such as housing, legal and government systems interact.
The project will use a mix of research methods, including Deakin’s Systems Thinking in Community Knowledge Exchange (STICKE) approach, to bring together local knowledge and identify how different parts of the housing system connect. This work will produce six regional profiles, as well as a broader analysis showing what is unique to each region and what challenges are shared across regional Victoria.
Together, this local work will build a stronger regional picture and help bring regional experience and evidence into decisions about housing policy, services and investment.
The Collaborate for Change team. Back, from left, regional co-ordinators Romy Moclair, Allied Justice (Ballarat and Grampians), Peter Coles, ARC Justice (north-central Victoria), Jess Possart, Gippsland Community Legal Service (Gippsland), Kat Bennett, Hume Riverina Community Legal Service (north-east Victoria) and Massimo Amerena, Barwon Community Legal (Geelong, Bellarine Peninsula, Surf Coast and Colac Otway). Front, from left, regional co-ordinator Louise Theodore, Mallee Family Care Community Legal Centre (north-west Victoria), Project Lead Kate Phillips, ARC Justice and Project Impact & Evaluation Lead Monica Butler, Barwon Community Legal.
Why this matters
Safe, secure and affordable housing is a human right. It’s fundamental to people’s wellbeing and their ability to participate in their communities.
But regional communities face particular housing pressures, including:
- limited rental options;
- shortages of public, social and crisis housing;
- rising housing costs;
- climate disasters;
- fewer local services.
Housing problems also rarely happen in isolation. Through our work across central and northern Victoria, ARC Justice sees how housing insecurity can intersect with financial hardship, family violence, climate disasters and other legal and social issues.
What the project is doing
Across regional Victoria, Collaborate for Change is:
- mapping local housing justice challenges and service systems;
- bringing together legal, housing and community organisations;
- identifying gaps, barriers and opportunities for better co-ordination;
- drawing on community and frontline experience;
- developing Collaborative Action Plans that identify local priorities and solutions;
- building a shared evidence base to support policy, advocacy and investment;
- bringing regional perspectives together to push for broader systemic change.
The project will also bring people with lived experience, community organisations, legal services and decision-makers together through a Regional Housing Summit.
ARC Justice’s role
ARC Justice leads Collaborate for Change across the six participating community legal centres, providing overall project leadership and co-ordination and supporting shared policy, advocacy, impact and evaluation work.
At the same time, we are delivering Collaborate for Change locally across central and northern Victoria.
Through Loddon Campaspe Community Legal Centre, Goulburn Valley Community Legal Centre and Housing Justice, ARC Justice works directly with people experiencing housing and legal problems across 13 local government areas. Collaborate for Change builds on that frontline experience.
We’re working with local organisations and communities to better understand housing pressures across our region, strengthen connections between services and identify practical opportunities for change.
What we learn locally will contribute to the broader evidence and advocacy developed collectively by the six regional community legal centres.
Working together across regional Victoria
Collaborate for Change brings together Victoria’s six regional community legal centres.
Project Lead
Each community legal centre is leading Collaborate for Change within its own region, ensuring the project remains grounded in local knowledge, relationships and experience. Together, the six centres are building a stronger regional voice on housing justice.
Project updates and resources
Get involved
We want to hear from organisations working with people experiencing housing, homelessness and related issues across central and northern Victoria.
If you’re interested in Collaborate for Change or would like to connect with the project, get in touch.
Funding
Collaborate for Change: Advancing Housing Justice in Regional Victoria is funded through the Victorian Legal Services Board Grants Program.
Peter Coles
Regional Co-ordinator (north-central Victoria) Collaborate for Change, ARC Justice
