Council officers in the City of Port Phillip are preparing to confiscate the personal belongings of the homeless under new local laws.
The council voted last week to allow staff to seize personal possessions of rough sleepers, including bedding, in response to “anti-social behaviour”.
As councils across Melbourne grapple with homelessness, the City of Melbourne was this week criticised over the interactions of its private security force with rough sleepers and Maribyrnong City Council recently voted to end Footscray’s controversial private security patrols.
Mayor Alex Makin told The Age that the City of Port Phillip was responding to increased concerns around safety with homeless encampments in St Kilda, prompting particular concern.
“The impact we’re seeking is a safer environment for rough sleepers and for our community,” Makin said. “This is not about targeting people in the situation of rough sleeping. It is about managing behaviours that are not suitable, behaviours where someone is at risk to themselves or a risk to others.”
About 25 people sleep rough each night in Port Phillip, with more in cars, couch-surfing or in crisis accommodation.
Makin said possessions would be safely stored in council service centres or with service providers and readily available for collection at no charge.
“We easily could have gone down that path of simply outlawing rough sleeping,” Makin said. “This is a nuanced approach that recognises that there are rough sleepers, they need to be protected, and that’s why we’re addressing behaviours.”
A Victoria Police spokesperson said reform in local laws, underpinned by the Human Rights Charter, was needed to ensure governance, accountability and a co-ordinated commitment to a therapeutic approach.
Crime rates in Port Phillip are higher than the Victorian average. In the year ending June 2025, Port Phillip recorded 10,974 criminal incidents per 100,000 people, compared to the Victorian average of 6814.
At last week’s lengthy and emotionally charged council meeting, resident Elizabeth Martinov said she had lived in St Kilda for 45 years and had been chased and attacked by a rough sleeper outside the local pharmacy and had an encampment of homeless people set up in front of her home.
“What followed was not just inconvenience, but unsafe and unsanitary conditions, drug use in public, syringes thrown over my fence, human waste and food scraps left to rot,” she said. “People who are homeless need real help, housing, support, services and pathways out of addiction and instability, but allowing encampments to grow unchecked is not helping them, and it is not protecting the wider community.”
A survey conducted by Port Phillip of 708 respondents found 76.1 per cent opposed the proposed law change.
However, at the council meeting five councillors voted in favour of enabling confiscation of possessions and three voted against the move.
Councillor Libby Buckingham opposed the change and said that rather than making the streets safer, it would add to conflict and further entrench poverty in the area.
“Taking a punitive approach further isolates people, and it aggravates a lot of the problems that see them behaving in a certain way,” she said.
Ruth Gordon, homelessness network co-ordinator at Launch Housing, said residents who supported the confiscation of possessions thought it was going to be a magic bullet, but it was unlikely to make much difference.
“It’s just going to make things worse for those individuals who get their stuff confiscated; they’re still going to be homeless,” she said.
Gordon said there was a systems failure with services for mental health, medical and housing all across Melbourne.
“Ten years ago we could have got them into private rental or set them up with a little bit of help,” she said. “Now it’s just really, really tough to get housing for people.”
Rory La Roche, a street outreach project worker at sex worker organisation Vixen, said people were “really devastated and scared” about how the changes in Port Phillip would play out.
“If they are removing people’s shelter and warmth, that is all they have to protect themselves from Melbourne winter,” she said. “If that is being targeted with being removed, even bedding, there’s going to be violations of people’s human rights and really harsh impacts on the many people sleeping rough that have disabilities and chronic health conditions.”
La Roche said parallels could be seen with the approaches taken by other councils, including in the City of Melbourne.
“We’re seeing an even more punitive approach happening in the City of Melbourne, with these security forces moving people on, confiscating items and being permitted to use force against unhoused people,” she said. “Life is already so hard on the street, so doing anything to make things harder for this community is, it’s just really brutal.”
La Roche pointed to Maribyrnong Council where the community had pushed back against private security in Footscray with punitive approaches to homeless people.
“That’s a really inspiring example of local people coming together in community to band around and act in solidarity with people sleeping rough and people on the streets,” she said.
Federal Labor MP Josh Burns said the decision by Port Phillip failed to respect people’s dignity and human rights and did nothing to fix the policy failures that led to homelessness.
“It’s actually a counterproductive measure that’s going to hurt the most vulnerable people and not make people safer,” he said. “I just don’t see the logic in it.”
Last year the City of Port Phillip proposed fining rough sleepers camping on council land, roads or footpaths, but abandoned the plan after concerns that the laws might not meet human rights legislation.
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