The rain was pouring and a swollen Moruya river was lapping at the shoulder of North Head drive as the pair made their weekly drive to North Head Campground, Moruya. They carried precious cargo that could not wait until the flooding subsided. Mr Fuzzard and Mr Ryan work for The Family Place Moruya - one of four specialist homelessness support services in the Eurobodalla.

They are on the frontlines of fighting homelessness. Their day's work included delivering four Food Bank boxes of groceries to those in need at the campground.

It took months of rapport-building to get to this stage; the trip is far more about relationships than delivering food.

Makeshift shelters were strewn all across the campsite, centered around the one primitive shower block which spits out cold water.

At the first delivery stop, Mr Fuzzard organised to drive one resident into Moruya the following day to have a warm shower and charge their electronics. The Family Place is trying to establish a shower voucher system to enable the homeless free access to a shower in town. The difficulty is finding shower facilities willing to participate in the program.

"We did approach council and ask for hot showers," Mr Fuzzard said. "They said it was too expensive."

Jason (name has been changed) stood outside his mouldy tent at North Head campground near Moruya. If fighting homelessness is a battle, North Head is the muddy, waterlogged trenches.

Most of the more than 50 permanent residents at the campground don't like the media visiting. They view the media as part of a system that in their view is oppressive and not designed for homeless people.

"I am sick enough without the mould and mess of living here," Jason said.

"I just need somewhere decent to live so I'm not lying in the wet all night.

"What can I do? I have to breathe!

"My tent stinks from condensation from breathing. No matter what you do, you always get the condensation. Because of this rain I can't dry anything.

"We need better tents. They're not designed to live in."

Jason has been homeless for almost six months after his former residence was sold and the new landlord decided not to continue renting the property.

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He invited Mr Fuzzard and Mr Ryan in to have a look inside his one-room OzTrail tent with a makeshift tarpaulin atrium.

Mr Fuzzard scraped his wet feet politely on the soaked scrap of AstroTurf laid as a doormat before entering.

Black mould patches stood out against the dappled yellow light through the canvas ceiling. There was mould on the roof, on the walls, and probably on the camp stretcher on the dirt floor - it was too dark inside Jason's home to tell.

Across the muddy puddle of a road, a large tent was collapsed like a deflated balloon.

"That was a brand new tent - $1000," Jason said.

It was purchased just days before the torrential storm hit Moruya. Now it is rubbish. It's a cycle Jason has seen too many times before in his short six months, and it drives people further into poverty. Money, often the final chunk out of one's personal savings, spent trying to create a safe space - only for it to fall on their face.

"We need better tents," Jason repeated.

He asked Mr Fuzzard to try to source army-quality tents. Something made of "strong canvas" that can stand all day and withstand the rain.

Mr Fuzzard asked if a shipping-container tiny-home would work.

"Oh they will never allow that," Jason replied.

After another food drop in the rain, Mr Fuzzard received a call from a client in Bega hospital. They were being discharged that morning and asked for a lift from Bega to Narooma. He googled the route and whistled.

"That is 250 kilometres return," he said. "I might try to organise a taxi or a bus or something, otherwise I will have to go this afternoon."

Just last week a 74-year-old woman phoned Mr Fuzzard in an emotional plea for support. Her rental had been sold and, come the mid-April eviction date, she faced the prospect of being homeless for the first time in her life. It's not that she can't pay. There is just nowhere available.

"It's not unusual to get calls like that weekly," Mr Fuzzard said. Stressed residents will call all four specialist homelessness support services in the Eurobodalla asking for help. The four services work closely together; Mr Fuzzard said they simply had to because the demand was so great.

Mr Fuzzard's mum founded a refugee shelter in Canberra when he was growing up. He would work during the day and help at the refuge at night.

"It's in the genes," he joked. He has been working in social welfare for 18 years, but only moved to Moruya in April 2021.

"Taking this job, I knew it would be hard," he said. "The Eurobodalla has one of the worst housing situations in the state."

Homelessness is less visible in regional areas such as the Eurobodalla, according to Mr Fuzzard.

"The numbers are skewed," he said. "They just don't sleep on the street. They are on a couch until their friend kicks them out, or in a car."

The Family Place help people apply for housing.

"On the whole it is a hopeless situation," Mr Fuzzard said.

The waitlist for social housing is 10 years. With Mr Fuzzard's help, certain people qualify for the priority list. NSW Family and Community Services (FACS) aim for a maximum six month wait time for priority applicants. In the Eurobodalla, it is more than two years.

According to FACS data, as of June 30, 2021, there were 270 applicants for social housing in Batemans Bay, more than 50 in Moruya and another 50 in Narooma. Of those, 55 applicants are considered priority.

Mr Ryan said he had filed five applications on behalf of homeless people in the last week.

Very rarely are applications successful. Local real-estate agents will receive more than 100 applications for a cheap rental in the shire. The homeless are last in the queue.

Mr Fuzzard said some real estate agents discriminated, and didn't want to deal with homeless people at all.

He said it was part of a wider paradigm trapping and condemning homeless people.

"There is this social idea that they have done something wrong," he said.

"For the majority, being homeless is completely out of their control.

"If the whole of Australia realised that this stigma - 'it's your fault' - if they realised that was false, the government would have to act on that."

Government action is ultimately where Mr Fuzzard sees the solution to the Eurobodalla's homelessness crisis.

"There are limited things a specialist homelessness support service can do to stop homelessness," he said. "There's only so much we can do to help.

"We need exit strategies, otherwise we are just helping them through their homelessness. We don't have the funding to build the brick and mortar.

"Until there is higher amounts of infrastructure being built, the problem isn't going away. There's not much on the horizon to suggest its going to get better."

He would like to see tiny homes as transitional housing - providing a safe space where people can stay clean and healthy and therefore have a better chance of getting a permanent place.

That is in addition to land being released to build affordable houses.

"They need to have caps on affordable houses," he said. "Thirty percent of new developments should be affordable housing... but developers wouldn't make as much money."

"Money," Mr Ryan scoffs.

And while Mr Fuzzard accepts the outlook is bleak, he wants the people he sees each week, to be treated like humans. Jason has a name. Jason has a story. So does each and every one of the people stowing away in their mouldy tents on a rainy morning in Moruya, trying to stay dry. Like every other human.

Mr Fuzzard wants to see proper facilities made available to these people.

"Governments don't want to make it nice enough that people want to stay there," he said.

"These people are going to live there anyway. They have to live somewhere. We might as well make it better."

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