Stories

Homelessness shouldn’t exist in Australia. Together, we can end it.

A reflection this World Homeless Day from Lucas Patchett, Orange Sky CEO and Co-Founder.

Twelve years ago, we had a simple but crazy dream.

We wanted to start a free mobile laundry service for people experiencing homelessness.

Would it work?

Would people use it?

Would the community get behind us through welcoming us in, becoming a volunteer and supporting with donations?

We had no grand strategic plan – just a desire to help people in our own backyard. We were curious as to why so many people were experiencing homelessness in a country as wealthy as Australia, and we wanted to do something about it.

Orange Sky Co-Founders Nic and Lucas with Sudsy

Orange Sky Co-Founders Nic & Lucas with our original laundry van, Sudsy back in 2014.

Twelve years on, the answer to every one of our questions has been a resounding yes.

Friends trusted us with their only possessions to wash. Demand grew quickly and people from all walks of life backed our mission to positively connect communities – signing up to volunteer, becoming regular givers, inviting us into their neighbourhoods and sharing our story.

We never set out to be ‘experts’ or to solve the homelessness crisis we were witnessing. We simply wanted to meet people where they were at and provide a safe space for washing, a warm shower and a chat.

Over the past 12 years, we’ve built a deeper knowledge about the unique challenges faced by communities across the country, and are determined to continue our support for people navigating homelessness and hardship.

These experiences have given us both the social license and the responsibility to contribute at a deeper level.

That is why I am proud to announce our national partnership with the Australian Alliance to End Homelessness (AAEH). Alongside many other organisations, people and communities, we are backing a shared goal this World Homeless Day that together, we can end homelessness.

Homelessness shouldn’t exist in Australia. It is too often framed as a personal failure, when the reality is a collision of unforeseen circumstances that no one person can make their way out of without structured support systems around them.

In a perfect world, Orange Sky wouldn’t need to exist – or at least our focus would look very different. But there are thousands of people we support every week navigating different hardship journeys. We have the opportunity to make real change, with a united goal being a key step toward reducing and ultimately ending homelessness.

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THE JOURNEY SO FAR

A simple mission to positively connect communities has led us into spaces we could never have imagined. Initially, our focus was on helping people sleeping rough – who make up just 6% of those experiencing homelessness (Census 2021). We realised that the people we see at shift are navigating a much wider range of challenges than just homelessness alone.

That insight shifted our focus.

We moved beyond outreach shifts for people sleeping rough to working alongside community centres, supporting families in crisis accommodation, showing up after natural disasters and travelling into remote communities and regional towns. We never arrive in a new location with a plan already made; we listen first and work alongside communities to tailor our service into a model that works best for them.

Everyone needs clean clothes and, perhaps more importantly, everyone needs human connection. Today, that connection happens over 450 times a week on shifts all across the country.

Undertaking a Churchill Fellowship in 2024 and the Social Impact Leadership Australia program in 2025 has expanded my understanding of homelessness on a global scale and what it means to drive meaningful change across the sector. I found myself asking, what is our role within the systems that we operate in, and how can we leverage our unique position in 60+ locations across the country to improve outcomes for people and communities?

THE ROLE WE PLAY

Orange Sky’s job isn’t to build houses, but to provide spaces for regular connection and access to essential services. In many places, we act as a front door for people experiencing homelessness and hardship, a soft entry point into the various services people need.

Our consistency and national footprint builds trust over time, and trust is what allows us to connect friends to existing support services and prevent people from falling through the gaps. Last financial year, we positively connected around 30,000 people and made more than 5,500 connections onto other services – which could be as simple as letting a friend know where they can find a meal, or linking them up with housing providers, access to emergency payments or health outreach teams.

That sense of trust also allows us to engage more strategically with partners through local ‘Advance to Zero’ projects.

Advance to Zero (AtoZ) is a groundbreaking national initiative of the Australian Alliance to End Homelessness (AAEH) that supports local collaborative efforts to end homelessness, starting with rough sleeping – one community at a time. Using a range of proven approaches from around the world, a growing network of nearly 30 communities across the country are supported not just to address individual instances of homelessness, or even reduce overall homelessness, but to work together to end it, by making it rare, brief and a once-off occurrence.

WHERE TO FROM HERE

To start with, we are investing further in our national volunteer and communications network (currently at 4,500 volunteers). We will appoint local volunteer leadership who are linked directly into local zero projects and are building those referral pathways to specialist homelessness services networks. This will help to deepen collaboration and ensure a localised response in as many communities as possible.

We are also building our knowledge of homelessness, hardship and our role in the sector – because greater understanding will lead to a better organisation, community, sector and ultimately outcomes for the people we exist to support.

The housing crisis is a very real and central part of homelessness, but so is the myriad of reasons why people fall through the cracks in the first place. How we prevent, support and transition people out of this experience is just as important. We need every part of the community connected and behind this common goal

None of this changes the core of what we do – we will always meet people where they are, on their terms, with consistency, warmth and genuine connection. And never without washing machines, a shower and a set of chairs.

Homelessness is solvable. Australia just hasn’t figured out how to do that yet. Orange Sky was built on the idea of giving things a go, so why wouldn’t we give this a crack as well?

We hope you’ll join us.

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