Title : A model for breaking addiction, built from the ground up - VI
Abstract:
The self-sustaining financial model - Operating without government funding
Shalom House has operated for 15 years without government operational funding. No grants. No funding cycles. No reporting obligations that distort programme design. The model is 100% self-funded through the participation of the people it serves. One hundred and fifty residents across 13 houses. Zero government operational support.
This is not an ideological position. It is a practical one. I am not saying government funding is wrong. I am saying what I have watched it do to programmes that depend on it. Organisations that depend on government grants design programmes around what funders want to see, not what residents need. They retain residents longer than appropriate because beds generate funding. They accept referrals they cannot serve because refusing reduces income. They measure what the reporting framework requires rather than what matters. The incentive structure is wrong, and programmes bend toward it. Often without anyone deliberately choosing it, the people the programme was built to serve end up serving the programme instead.
The self-sustaining model removes this distortion. The programme exists to produce outcomes. If it doesn’t produce outcomes, it doesn’t sustain itself. That is a different kind of accountability from anything a funding agreement creates.
The Mechanism: residents transition into genuine external employment within 4–7 months of entry. Not work-for-welfare, real employment in the open labour market with real employers. Residents earn income, contribute to household costs, and are fully off government payments within this timeframe. This generates the revenue that funds the model. No single funding source. No dependency on any one employer or any one income stream.
The accountability this creates is different from anything external funding produces. At Shalom House, 90% of staff are programme graduates. The people running the houses, managing the programme, mentoring the residents, have been through it themselves. The accountability is direct and personal, no audit replicates it.
The economic case is straightforward: incarcerating one person in Australia costs approximately $130,000 per year. The cost to government of a Shalom House resident is zero. We are producing employment, housing, tax-paying adults, and restored families at no cost to the public purse. This session explains the financial architecture and examines what would need to be true for this model to be adapted in different national and regulatory contexts.
