MP Roma Britnell calls for urgent action to address homelessness in Warrnambool

Member for South West Coast Roma Britnell said the state government had done nothing to address the state of some social housing in the city for a number of years.

In addition to that there is a long waiting list of people in need of housing.

"If I had $25 million to spend on investments I would have a darn tight plan of what I wanted to do," Ms Britnell said.

"You cannot waste money to the extraordinary level these guys are."

Ms Britnell said she would hope the funds would be used to build up to 70 extra homes, based on a spend of about $350,000 per home.

"Unfortunately we won't see that," she said.

Ms Britnell said the condition of some of Warrnambool's social housing properties was unacceptable.

Brophy Family and Youth Services executive manager Kathy Sanderson said the region needed more properties that met the changing demand, particularly one and two-bedroom properties.

Brophy have at least 100 young people on its books on any given month and around 30 young people a month who need crisis accommodation in Warrnambool.

"We certainly still have high levels of young people with no permanent address and nowhere to stay," she said.

"We see all these stories about a strong property market and great prices, but that causes problems at the other end.

"It means many people, especially young people, are not in a position to ever buy a property themselves or get into the market while the prices go up.

"The town is booming but it just keeps pushing prices up."

Ms Sanderson said the stock in crisis accommodation was so low sometimes they didn't have anywhere for clients to stay.

"Often they just stay at a hotel overnight or for a week but sometimes we don't have anywhere for them to stay so they might stay with friends, be in a tent or a caravan park.

"If you can develop better affordable housing for most people in the community then they are already more likely to be able to get into housing ownership then rental properties become more available for people who don't have the means," she said.

"There's no movement, we need to work out how to generate movement in the housing space to create new opportunities for people.

"The state government committed to increasing public and social housing stock but we haven't heard more since then."

A state government spokesman said there were no details yet on how the $25 million would be spent in Warrnambool.

However it would be on top of 15 new homes planned for the area through the Building New Homes to Fight Homelessness program.

Three of these homes are due for completion in June and another two in July.

Infrastructure Victoria's 30-year strategy found that social housing has not kept pace with overall growth in housing.

It also found the unmet demand in Warrnambool was estimated to be more than 1400 dwellings.

The report also found that just 23 per cent of new lettings in Warrnambool were affordable to lower income households.

That is compared to an average of 40 per cent across Victoria.

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