Proactive prevention is the goal of Woden Community’s Service’s new Tenancy Assistance Program (TAP) for individuals and families at risk of homelessness. Photo: Woden Community Service.
He came in needing a hand with some food items for his family.
A dad, a middle-income earner in his mid-40s who hadn’t asked for help before.
The situation is becoming all too familiar for Woden Community Service’s (WCS) executive manager of mental health and community access Leanne Heald.
WCS’s emergency food relief service, Little Pantry, is experiencing increased demand from sections of the community not previously seen through its doors – people including mortgage holders struggling with the rising cost of living, she says.
People who are having to choose between paying the rent or their mortgage, fuel to drive to work … or food to put on the table. But it wasn’t this particular man’s request for a few extra groceries that struck Leanne so forcibly.
“It was that he asked if we would put the food into Coles bags so that he could tell his family he’d been shopping,” she recalls.
“Like he felt, ‘It’s my fault somehow’.”
That sense of shame or reluctance to ask for help is just one of the barriers a new program at WCS is hoping to break down to support individuals and families experiencing a tough time and at risk of losing their homes.
Proactive and with a focus on prevention, the new Tenancy Assistance Program (TAP) offers the scaffolding that can help people stabilise their tenancies or mortgages – whether that be in public housing, private rentals or home ownership – before a crisis hits and they lose the roof over their head, according to Leanne.
The program, which began at the end of 2024, aims to get to the root cause of the often complex issues that contribute to the risk of homelessness, including financial hardship, mental ill-health, relationship breakdown, and family and domestic violence.
Whether it’s help with groceries, financial advice, liaising with real estate agents or banks, or overcoming language barriers, TAP aims to build connections early so that participants have the best chance of long-term security, Leanne says.
To help people access the program or to find out what help is out there, WCS is holding drop-in sessions from 1 to 4 pm every Thursday at its Community Service Hub in Westfield Woden.
The program has capacity for 80 clients and is currently assisting 62 people ranging in age from 24 to 70 years old, TAP co-ordinator Caitlin Bradley says.
“Almost half of those people are from our CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse) community and 22 per cent are women affected by domestic violence,” she explains.
“We developed the idea for the walk-in service because we wanted to have a greater reach in the community.”
The range of support spans from needing advice and guidance on how to strengthen a rental application to a one-hour financial counselling session through care or more complex case management and crisis response for those facing imminent homelessness, according to Caitlin.
It’s about education, empowerment and early intervention.
“Our case managers are great at finding solutions,” she says.
“It’s easy to feel really stuck and alone but there are always options out there. The drop-in sessions offer help with that first step forward. Once you see that you won’t be stuck in that dark place forever, it’s much easier to keep progressing.”
Caitlin cites the recent case of a man in his late 30s who came in because he was having trouble establishing a new tenancy.
“He had experienced a relationship breakdown and was living in his car – he was doing it pretty tough,” she says.
“Our case manager was able to provide him with support to get financial counselling and affordable housing options available in the ACT so that he was able to start a tenancy he could maintain.”
The beauty of TAP is it empowers clients to build their confidence and independence, according to Caitlin.
It supports people to retain choice and control over their lives, because if you can get help earlier, you’re not scrambling without hope.
Leanne says often the hardest first step is asking for help.
“But people need help all across Canberra for different reasons,” she says.
“We want them to know they are not alone.
“Our goal is to try and stop the cycle of poverty, to stop someone becoming homeless way before they end up on our door with an eviction notice.”
Find out more about TAP or the work of Woden Community Service here.
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