Precarious Housing: From research to practice

Cameron Lavery is a principal lawyer at Justice Connect where he has worked since 2016. His current role as the head of Community Programs includes leading Justice Connect’s Homeless Law, with a specialist focus on preventing and ending homelessness for Victorians by increasing access to integrated and digital legal support, and advocating for better laws and policies.

Cameron also leads the Seniors Law program, overseeing health justice partnerships for older people experiencing or at risk of elder abuse in Victoria and New South Wales.

Prior to starting with Justice Connect, Cameron was the managing lawyer of the LawRight (formerly QPILCH) Homeless Persons’ Legal Clinic for over four years, supervising 20 outreach legal clinics for people facing homelessness across Queensland. He previously managed the Pro Bono Referral Services of the Queensland Law Society and the Bar Association of Queensland, and was a lawyer with LawRight’s Self Representation Service. Cameron has also worked in private practice and has been actively involved in the wider-community and legal assistance sectors.

Associate Professor Maree Petersen is a social work academic with a research focus on older people experiencing disadvantage. A particular focus has been her work on understanding how older women come to be precariously housed in later life despite legislative, policy and social changes that sought to enhance gender equity.

Maree’s work is informed by a life course framework to understand how disadvantage accumulates over people’s lives and culminates in housing precarity in older years. With large current research projects on poverty and older people, and elder abuse her work seeks to bring attention to the intersection of the policy areas of housing, homelessness, community aged care, welfare, and justice necessary for ensuring wellbeing for people as they age.

Studying legal need and capability from every angle, Hugh has worked on several landmark access to justice and legal needs projects. 

Previously at the Law and Justice Foundation of NSW for 15 years, Hugh joined Victoria Law Foundation in September 2019 as Principal Researcher, taking on the Research Director role in August 2024. He led the Foundation’s Data Mapping Project, a sustained examination of the use and utility of Victoria’s civil justice data and continues to work on the Public Understanding of Law Survey.

Throughout his career, Hugh has worked closely with legal aid commissions, community legal centres, and state and federal governments, giving him a deep understanding of legal institutions and access to justice issues throughout Australia.