Buildings awaiting development in Melbourne’s CBD could soon be used to provide temporary pop-up housing to the increasing number of homeless people on the city’s streets.
Launch Housing and Robert Pradolin, former general manager of Frasers Property Australia and Property Industry Foundation board member, have been working together to develop a project that would utilize existing infrastructure and see pop-up shelters built in vacant office buildings undergoing long development processes.
“[The buildings] already have existing toilets and showers so to create the ‘pop-up’ cubicles which are individually secured for short-term accommodation for our homeless during this period makes sense,” Pradolin said.
The pop-up shelters will be constructed using an existing panelized system that can be easily built, deconstructed and reused in another location once a building is ready to be developed. The shelters will be manufactured in Australia or purchased overseas depending on which option is more economical.
The City of Melbourne’s two-yearly street count reported 246 homeless people living in the CBD and immediately adjacent areas, an increase of about 100 compared to the previous period.
The idea stemmed from a conversation Pradolin had with his 23-year-old daughter while sitting at a cafe on Degraves Street in Melbourne’s CBD, after a homeless person approached them to ask for some spare change to pay for a night’s accommodation.
“We started discussing the issue and it was when [the ballroom] at Flinders Street Station was in the news and we said what a pity it was that it had been lying empty for years and not being used to provide shelter,” said Pradolin.
The City of Melbourne is currently conducting an audit on empty buildings in the CBD for the project. Pradolin said the team could approach owners of buildings such as 555 Collins Street for this project. That building, currently for sale and owned by the Fragrance Group, is one example of an existing site that is about to go through a planning process, which will take at least 12 months. The building will sit idle during this period.
In April, Victorian planning minister Richard Wynne rejected the 555 Collins Street proposal, designed by Bates Smart, due to the building breaking one of Melbourne’s planning rules that states buildings cannot overshadow the Yarra River. The proposal entailed an 83-storey tower that housed mixed office, residential and hotel space.
Launch Housing CEO Heather Holst said the organization does not usually do short-term housing projects, but the rough sleeping problem in Melbourne’s CBD was so bad a temporary solution was necessary while long-term solutions, which need government funding, continued to be worked on.
“We are treating this like an emergency […] When a community has a fire and scores of people or hundreds of people are displaced, like what happened in [the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires], the community works out temporary housing solutions and that’s what we’re thinking here,” Holst said.
Once the pop-up shelters have been completed, Pradolin said Launch Housing and organizations such as St Vincent de Paul’s would provide the necessary bedding and furniture.
While the project is a lot cheaper than long-term housing, there will be upfront costs for the pop-up shelters, which Pradolin hopes to raise through crowdfunding. The labour needed to construct the shelters will be done for free through industry support and companies such as ProBuild Australia.
“The more you think about the concept, the more it makes sense and it is something that the industry’s chair, the Property Industry Foundation, is in the best position to assist and make happen,” Pradolin said.
It is hoped that if the first site is successful, the concept will be implemented in other cities and states.
