Mayor calls homelessness issue 'a crisis' after baby dies at riverside camp

Community leaders in Wagga Wagga are demanding an urgent solution to the homelessness crisis days after a baby died and another was hospitalised following their birth at a riverside camp.

The 37-year-old mother was taken to hospital from the homeless camp on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River, just downstream from the popular Wagga Beach, on Saturday afternoon.

"It is very confronting," Wagga Wagga MP Joe McGirr said.

"It's shocking and I share the community's real outpouring of concern and grief over this.

The state government has confirmed that the woman was known to Homes NSW, the Department of Communities and Justice and NSW health.

A full inquiry is underway into her interactions with the system in the lead-up to the birth.

Advocates argue the incident highlighted a growing and complex crisis around homelessness, urging assistance to deal with issues of mental health and domestic violence, as well as housing.

Wagga Mayor Dallas Tout said the issues are "driven out of state government" and is seeking a meeting with relevant ministers and NSW Premier Chris Minns when he is in Sydney later this week.

"You need to get everyone in a room, and we need to start having action on this rather than everyone duck shoving to everyone else about whose responsibility it is.

"We just need to resolve this."

Cr Tout said he had spoken to other councils across the state and said the issue was widespread.

"It's been horrendous, so that's why we've been trying our best in local meetings with state government bodies," he said.

"It's time to really move it up several notches now."

NSW Minister for Housing and Homelessness Rose Jackson rejected that there had been blame-shifting by her government.

"We have been taking responsibility. I think if there's blame-shifting happening it's council to the state government," she said.

"I think it's somewhat difficult for me to accept that them suggesting blame-shifting needs to stop, when their exact approach is to try and do that, but I can understand that people want the state government to play a central role ... and we are doing that.

"Just last week we coordinated an interagency meeting taking that responsibility, taking that control and bringing parties together ... and it was council that actually asked us to postpone that meeting."

Need for more social housing

According to Homelessness NSW, 68,000 people had sought help from homelessness services across the state last year and rough sleeping had increased by 32 per cent.

Wagga Wagga City Council recorded more than 250 people sleeping rough in the city as of January 2025.

Meanwhile there were 674 households on the social housing waitlist for Wagga Wagga as of March, with the expected wait time five to ten years.

Dr McGirr said while there needed to be more housing it was not the only solution.

"We have seen the first social housing to go up in Wagga in 15 years in the last few years, so things have happened. We just need to do more," he said.

"We need to do more in making sure those services reach people, and that is complicated."

He said people had a variety of reasons for making a home in the camps.

"I am aware, for example, that people have been offered services and don't want to take those services up, and I've visited sites and heard that firsthand," Dr McGirr said.

"I think the staff from housing do a great job trying to reach out to people."

Homelessness NSW CEO Dom Rowe said it was not uncommon for people to decline assistance as people were often homeless as the result of failures in the system, such as mental health, leading up to that point.

"Many of the people experiencing homelessness on the banks of the Murrumbidgee are really at their wits end and are survivors in some ways," she said.

The death of the baby in Wagga will be investigated by a coroner, and Ms Rowe is calling for mandatory reporting of anyone who dies while homeless.

"We would then be able to figure out when, where and how people experiencing homelessness pass away," she said.

Ms Jackson said she was open to the idea of mandating coronial investigations, but noted that deaths through natural causes were already referred to the coroner, who decided whether to hold an inquiry.

"But if there are ways to improve that reporting to capture any information that we can, and make sure that any patterns or systemic issues that can be identified through those processes are improved, we are completely open to that ... and something we've looked at as part of the homelessness strategy."

Dr McGirr said while there is "no magic wand" there are some things that can be done.

"I think we can get our agencies working better together," he said.

"I think we can make better efforts to reach people who are in particularly difficult circumstances, and we just need to keep pushing on the housing issue as well."