St Vincent de Paul is rolling out a soup van in Traralgon and Morwell after successfully servicing homeless people in Moe for many years.
St Vincent Morwell social justice officer Kevin Hutchinson the organisation had identified four boarding houses in Morwell and in Traralgon where the soup van will make regular trips to hand out hot soup and sandwiches in winter.
Mr Hutchinson said the van would park near the boarding houses on Maryvale Crescent, Buna Street, and McMillan Street in Morwell and Campbell Street in Traralgon to service the tenants there.
“The boarding houses don’t have fridges so there’s a problem for the tenants. A lot of the food that we give them they come back and say it’s been stolen by other tenants,” he said.
St Vincent Traralgon social justice officer Larayne Ambrosini said the society had decided to expand the soup van’s service beyond Moe because of the high demand to support people living in boarding houses.
“There’s definitely a need for it (soup van service), once it gets up and running it’ll continue,” she said.
Mr Hutchinson said the society was aware that “the boarding houses are becoming an issue” because of antisocial behaviour, but this would not stop it from offering support to tenants.
“We understand that we can’t just turn our back on them, we have to help them in some way and this is the most cost-effective way of offering assistance to those people,” he said.
The charity banned sending its volunteers to boarding houses a couple of years ago due to aggression issues among tenants.
Mr Hutchinson said the organisation needed volunteers to staff the soup van that will go around Morwell and Traralgon and also help out prepare food in the kitchen.
Volunteers must be 18 or over, pass a police check and obtain a working-with-children certificate.
Mr Hutchinson said St Vincent would cover all the costs for volunteers to secure these documents.
Depending on how many volunteers sign up for the program, Mr Hutchinson said the organisation was looking at servicing 100 people per week in Traralgon and in Morwell due to the high turnover of tenants at boarding houses.
