Safe Sleep Mackay secures return of Sleep Bus to local homeless community

A local charity was at the mercy of a national provider when it raised $300,000 for emergency accomodation only to be told it might not ever be delivered.

Australian Street Aid Project founder Kayleigh Brewster teamed up with Lisa Jamieson to bring a Sleep Bus to Mackay.

A local charity will roll its sleeves up and get the work done after a national registered charity it was working with veers towards collapsing.

Sleepbus, which manufactured, maintained and ran re-fitted buses as emergency overnight accommodation delivered one of three buses which local group, Safe Sleep Mackay, raised $300,000 to purchase.

Sleepbus CEO Simon Rowe arrived in town on Thursday finishing the drive from Melbourne to deliver the only bus of its kind in the region despite the national charity being in financial strife.

Ownership for the bus was transferred to Australian Street Aid Project, which runs homeless support service Chances House.

Kinetic bus services will provide their Paget bus yard as the overnight parking spot.

Lisa Jamieson from Safe Sleep Mackay said the bus’ arrival in Mackay was like receiving a new born baby.

“We went through that stage of when is it going to come, what is it going to look like when it gets here,” she said.

“Now that the baby has arrived, we’re like ‘oh what are we going to do now that it’s physically here’.”

Under the original plans the national charity would have retained ownership of the buses and assumed responsibility for ongoing operations, such as maintenance, volunteer coordination and service delivery requirements.

The new Sleepbus has arrived in Mackay

Now that the baton has been passed to a local group, Ms Jamieson said it gives them flexibility to run the service in a way that suits Mackay’s community.

The bus offers safe, temporary overnight accommodation in climate-controlled individual sleep pods, with the lockable doors and toilets and a screen displaying help service contacts though Ms Jamieson said the new model won’t include the TV as it was underutilised.

It is still unclear when the bus will roll out its service to the public though Ms Jamieson said it is here to stay for as long as the community needed it.

“We will have them out there operating to provide safe sleeps for people who are in a vulnerable position in our community, without a doubt,” she said.

“I don’t have a crystal ball to tell you that in the next five years we won’t have a housing crisis.

“I can tell you from on the street experience that it hasn’t gotten better.”

Ms Jamieson she isn’t ruling out Mr Rowe supplying Mackay with a second bus, but that they’re energy is directed towards getting the first one right in the meantime.

The bus, which can hold up to 16 people at any one time will bring welcomed support to local homeless services who are strained from a surge in cases of young people looking for shelter in Mackay after some reported having to decline a bed for 80 percent of their clients.

Latest data from peak community service body QCOSS showed that over 1600 youth under the age of 19 reached out to a homeless service in the 2022-2023 financial year.

Originally published as Safe Sleep Mackay secures return of Sleep Bus to local homeless community