A baby has been found dead in a tent at a homeless encampment near Wagga beach on the Murrumbidgee River in regional New South Wales, prompting the kind of renewed calls to address homelessness that everyone agrees on until it's time to actually do something about it.

Police arrived on Saturday to find a 37-year-old woman with two infants, one of whom was deceased. The surviving baby and the mother were taken to hospital, where the infant remained in critical condition as of Monday afternoon. Authorities, in a grimly familiar refrain, said there were "no suspicious circumstances," while local media reported the woman had recently given birth.

Local councillor Richard Foley called the death a tragedy and noted the housing crisis had gotten "out of hand" - a diagnosis that feels like stating water is wet. "We've now had a death of a young baby, a newborn baby, in a tent," he said. "A newborn child is deceased, and another one is in a serious condition. The mother was escorted to hospital on the weekend, which is just unacceptable."

Foley said the river encampment had grown bigger each year, as Wagga Wagga saw a substantial rise in people sleeping rough. In 2024, a local council paper indicated there were 257 homeless people in the area - a 71% increase from eight years earlier. "Let's face it, we've seen this type of thing across all cities," Foley said. "But it's growing in number out here. And the rental availability in this city is beyond a crisis. This is an emergency."

The rental vacancy rate in the Riverina hit a record low of 0.6% in January 2025, according to PRD Real Estate - a figure that makes finding a place to live feel like a competitive sport no one wants to play.

Foley is working on a fresh report into how many rough sleepers are in the region and called on the state government to "step up and start doing something." He noted a lack of public housing in the area, adding that while the state government had promised to build more social housing, those dwellings would only replace existing stock. "A line in the sand has got to be drawn. People are sick and tired of the political class, which is just totally disconnected."

Comment was being sought from NSW homelessness minister Rose Jackson, who presumably has a lot on her plate, though what exactly that plate contains remains unclear.