After years of homelessness and housing uncertainty, a group of men in Melbourne’s inner west thought they found their forever home at Foley House.
Bruce Rigby was moved from a psychiatric ward to an Abbotsford rooming house before the Footscray facility, where he felt safe in the knowledge he wouldn’t be asked to move on.
“I always found it reassuring that I could stay there as long as I wanted to,” said Rigby, who lived at Foley House for seven years.
That sense of security is no more.
Foley House is due to permanently close on June 30, which will mean dozens of high-needs men need to be rehoused. The decision the Salvation Army, which operates the facility, has blindsided residents and workers, who are branding it a betrayal and say it risks the men falling back into chronic homelessness.
The facility offers round-the-clock care for up to 45 residents, and there are currently about 30 men there living with complex psychiatric diagnoses, brain injuries, physical disabilities and drug and alcohol addictions.
The men are supplied with every necessity, from meals to toothpaste, leaving them with some money (beyond their $824 fortnightly rent) to spend on whatever they want.
A Salvation Army spokesman said the program ran at a loss for a decade, and the organisation absorbed the deficit to keep Foley House afloat. But “as the options for support funding narrowed, the needs of the residents broadened in complexity and the cost of running the program increased”, the spokesman said.
“The end of the current service on June 30, 2026 is subject to the relocation each resident,” he said.
It’s cold comfort for residents and staff as they work to rehouse the men. The facility’s looming closure comes weeks after the Salvation Army launched the state government-funded Lighthouse Cafe, which is within 10 minutes’ walk of Foley House.
The opening of the controversial cafe was spruiked as the “missing piece of the puzzle” for Footscray, specifically intended to act as a triage connecting people to local services. But critics note the irony when the Foley House program is being stripped from the community.
The state government approached the Salvation Army to run the cafe.
“The cafe was a bit of a betrayal,” said a Foley House worker who asked not to be named, fearing it would damage their job prospects.
“I’m not against the idea as a way of giving people somewhere to access support, but it’s just shit timing in that they’re rolling that out and unravelling us at the same time.
“Where are the social workers there going to refer people to?”
The Salvation Army’s Victorian homelessness spokesman insisted the decision to end the Foley House program is unrelated to any other activity in Footscray.
He said rehousing the men and ensuring their tailored care was the organisation’s immediate focus.
A former manager at Foley House said the reality was more complicated, as there was “no chance in hell” all the men would secure equivalent supported independent living accommodation.
‘They’re going to be destitute.’
A former Foley House resident on his fears for the current residents
The former manager said the men now faced the prospect of moving into inadequate (and less costly) supported residential services or rooming houses, given the federal government sought to tighten the purse strings on the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
“It’s taking months and months to get an urgent review through the NDIS at the moment,” the former manager said.
“These men won’t be kicked off the program. They are genuinely severely disabled, but the only thing left is [supported residential services] or rooming houses.”
The former manager claimed some residents would ultimately choose homelessness.
Another former resident, who asked not to be named to protect their privacy, said many of the men in Foley House were “not going to make it on their own” in the wider NDIS system.
Between having to budget, and the system “taking advantage”, he suspected many of the men would eventually become homeless. “They’re going to be destitute,” he said.
Foley House’s impending closure had traumatised residents who were uncertain about where they would end up, the staff member said, while some did not understand what was happening.
A spokeswoman for the Victorian government said it would continue funding Foley House until all residents had transitioned out of the program. The government was working with the Salvation Army to ensure none of the men became homeless, the spokeswoman said.
“We know this is an unsettling time for residents, and we’re standing by them,” she said.
“The decision to close Foley House was one made independently by the Salvation Army following its own organisational review.”
The Foley House building will remain within the Salvation Army’s control, and the organisation said it was considering options for other services and programs there.
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