Moira Council is planning to host a round table next month to discuss how to support the increasing number of people experiencing homelessness in the region and to bring together a number of agencies and individuals in the sector.
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Moira councillor Julie Brooks said on average in the shire 80 people per night were sleeping rough.
"That's a staggering statistic, so that really banged it home to us as councillors that it was probably a bit of an unseen problem," she said.
"You don't always have visibility of these things if people are living out in the bush or on the river bank, but I'm personally aware just in my town in Yarrawonga of about 15 people that I know that don't have a roof over their heads at night.
"When I walk up and down the High Street every day here in Yarrawonga, I see the same people that are clearly homeless who have either got their belongings in a shopping trolley or in a backpack or that are sitting around in various positions in the town.
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"It's absolutely desperate and that's why I think as a community, as a council we felt so compelled to act, because we just felt that you're used to seeing people when you go to the city centres seeing people sleeping rough in the streets, but it's not something we've experienced in small country towns.
"That visibility is why it's become a bit more of an issue for the locals."
Ms Brooks said council had been contacted "quite a bit" by the community asking what council was doing about the homelessness issue.
"There was a lot of pressure on us to do something about it, so what as a council we've determined to do is we've convened a round table," she said.
"[We're] getting all the agencies together and that's actually next month in July (15th)."
Ms Brooks said the response to homelessness had been disparate with many separate community members doing individual things, like driving people from the river into town to have a hot shower and driving them back, providing haircuts or paying for short stays caravan parks.
Ms Brooks said council wanted to take the lead on coordinating all of those services.
"People are really genuinely concerned about this situation happening in our towns and our small communities and they really are reaching out as individuals to try to do something to address it," she said.
"But a little bit more of a coordinated effort might have more benefit.
"We realise we can't magic up housing, but I think there are things we could do as a community that would go some way to ensuring that people who are living rough can have hot meals or a hot shower or warm clothes or a blanket or those sorts of things, so that's probably where we're at.
"One of the things we thought about is that there are lots of football grounds around that have really good shower facilities, so whether we could open those facilities up so people can have hot showers, those sorts of things."
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