Adelaide is leading the charge to become the first city outside North America to achieve functional zero homelessness.

On any given night, there are up to 120 people sleeping rough in the Adelaide CBD. The Adelaide Zero Project focuses on a coordinated and sustained effort to more effectively match the need for housing with supply. Functional zero homelessness is reached when the number of people who are homeless in a city is no greater than housing placement availability.

The key to the approach is knowing the overall number of people sleeping rough, on a by-name basis, on any given night and publicly reporting these figures in as close to real time as possible. The Don Dunstan Foundation has been working with former Thinker in Residence, Roseanne Haggerty’s Community Solutions, to bring this initiative to Adelaide, following on from its success across 75 US communities.

The first phase of the Adelaide Zero Project was understanding how the US model, Functional Zero, could be applied in Adelaide. This 90-day project, delivered with the support of the Office of the Commissioner for Public Sector Employment, focused on bringing together key government and non-government stakeholders to develop an implementation plan as a practical framework for delivering Functional Zero. The implementation plan was launched on 22 February 2018 and provided the foundation from which the second stage of the project (implementation) could progress. For more information about the Adelaide Zero Project and Functional Zero visit.