A specialist homelessness outreach service has warned a lack of funding is threatening a range of its programs, including one that has encouraged those sleeping rough to vote in the upcoming ACT election.
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Homelessness is a major barrier to voting for many complex reasons, not least of which are the difficulty in including the difficulties in proving identity, the frequent changes of address, and misguided fears of being fined.
It's an issue that Elections ACT has tried to address directly for the first time in the 2016 campaign.
They've developed relationships with agencies working in the sector, met with representatives from the Red Cross and ACT Shelter, and created fact sheets on voting for support workers and for Canberrans experiencing homelessness.
Electoral Commissioner Phil Green said it was his agency's "first foray into the area", and that feedback from the work will shape what they do in future elections.
"For instance, if it is found to be useful and appropriate, Elections ACT may look at providing homelessness voting workshops to representatives of homelessness services as a group, or providing education programs to the clients themselves, or enrolment drives," he said.
But one group who is already running such workshops, the Street Law outreach legal service, has warned that a lack of funding certainty is placing its voting program and many others at risk.
Street Law has operated for the past six years under the Canberra Community Law umbrella, providing a range of legal supports for those experiencing or at-risk of homelessness.
That includes running clinics on "voting with no fixed address".
Supervising solicitor Anusha Goonetilleke said the turnout to the clinics had been low, and that it was a difficult area, because the service didn't want to be seen to be pushing people into voting.
Most Canberrans experiencing homelessness were also likely to have other, more pressing priorities, she said.
"It is a really difficult thing, because when you talk to a client, there's so many different things they're juggling," she said.
"You talk to a rough sleeping client, they are thinking 'where am I going to stay tonight?', 'where am I going to get food?'."
"So sometimes things like voting may not be a priority."
But Ms Goonetilleke said recent federal funding cuts had put significant pressure on the service.
Uncertainty over its ACT funding, which expires in July, was also making the service "cautious" about its work.
"We normally try to be proactive… but when you don't know whether you're going to exist, it makes it really difficult," she said.
She said she feared the ACT could become the only state or territory without a specialised legal outreach service.
