It should not take such a horrendous event to identify a gap in services that mental health professionals, advocacy groups and families have argued – for decades –needed to be filled. People with mental illness typically spend long periods in mental health wards, often against their will. On the Central Coast, with a population approaching half a million, there are only two acute locked mental health wards and no rehabilitation services. About 70 per cent of rough sleepers have a mental health condition, and nearly 20 per cent of ED presentations involve mental health. The NSW government is derelict in not immediately implementing a program to bolster mental health accommodation.