Ending homelessness takes more than good intentions – it takes data, collaboration, and learning from lived experiences. The Brisbane Zero Forum brings all of that together. Now in its third year, the 2025 forum, held on 5 August, focused on practical solutions and frontline insights.
Brisbane Zero is part of Advance to Zero, a shared strategy used in Australia and around the world to end homelessness, starting with people sleeping rough. The goal is to make homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring.
The framework is built on four interconnected approaches:
- Housing First – making sure people get safe, permanent housing as a first step.
- Person-centred and driven by lived experience – listening to people with lived experience and putting their needs first.
- Improvement and data-driven – improving how services work together and advocate collectively.
- Place-based collaboration – working together in local communities.
Brisbane Youth Service at the forum
Young people face unique challenges when it comes to housing and support, and Brisbane Youth Service aims to ensure their voices are heard in system-wide solutions.
During the Brisbane Zero Forum, Young Women Young Families Manager Renee Head joined the panel ‘Senior practitioner insights on supporting people who live with multiple impacts of poverty, exclusion and injustice’. She shared her reflections from working with young people navigating overlapping challenges, such as violence, trauma, poor mental health, and homelessness.
Renee emphasised the importance of wraparound support tailored to each young person’s needs. This includes trauma-informed, strengths-based, client-centred, and youth-focused supports, like counselling, parenting support, and help to build safer relationships.
What is Brisbane Zero?
Brisbane Zero is a team of community service providers working together to end homelessness, including Brisbane Youth Service, Micah Projects, the Salvation Army, and Common Ground Queensland.
At the heart of Brisbane Zero is the By-Name List. With a person’s consent, their basic information is added to a secure, shared list. This helps services know who needs support and work together to respond quickly and effectively. The By-Name List means services can coordinate support more easily, housing needs are visible and prioritised, and data can be used to advocate for housing and services.
Forum highlights
At the forum, speakers shared ‘Advance to Zero’ stories from across Australia and overseas – showing how homelessness is being solved one person, one family, and one community at a time.
One of the highlights was the Brisbane Zero First Nations Over 45 Cohort Strategy, a targeted pilot initiative aimed at ending homelessness for older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The strategy brought together more than 15 organisations to provide culturally safe, coordinated support for First Nations individuals aged 45 and over who had experienced rough sleeping, recognising the long-term impacts of colonisation, trauma and disadvantage.
Another session explored the Australian Homelessness Vulnerability Triage Tool (AHVTT). Dr Elizabeth-Rose Ahearn from The University of Queensland shared her research on how the tool is being tested and used. She encouraged attendees to think about how frontline workers’ insights and local data can help improve systems.
Looking ahead
As we look ahead, the message is clear: ending homelessness is possible when we listen, collaborate, and act together. By combining frontline expertise with lived experience and coordinated, evidence-based support, we can help young people move out of crisis and create new futures.
Learn more at brisbanezero.org.au.