Page 1147 - Week 03 - Thursday, 18 March 2010
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community housing stock, which is creating a very unfortunate situation and is overloading Housing ACT.
In 2008, the federal government agency FAHCSIA released a report, The road home. The first paragraph of the executive summary states:
Homelessness can affect anyone. In Australia, around 105,000 people are homeless on any given night. While the overall rate of homelessness has been relatively stable over the last 12 years, increasing numbers of children, families and older people are experiencing homelessness. Since 2001, there has been a drop in the numbers of young people who are homeless. Indigenous people are over-represented in the homeless population.
The executive summary goes on to say:
Homelessness includes people who are sleeping rough, as well as people staying in temporary, unstable or substandard accommodation. Many people who are homeless cycle between homelessness and marginal housing. People are staying in crisis accommodation for longer because they have nowhere else to go.
Homelessness is not just a housing problem. Homelessness has many drivers and causes, including the shortage of affordable housing, long term unemployment, mental health issues, substance abuse and family and relationship breakdown. Among women, domestic and family violence is the main reason for seeking help from specialist homelessness services.
In addition to that, those in our community who are suffering from a disability have a particularly rough time. If you are suffering from a disability and you are perhaps on welfare or you are working in a low-paid job—if that happens to be your circumstance—it is extremely tough to find accommodation in Canberra in the private market. Then you are forced into the public housing market, which is not desirable.
It is not desirable for Canberrans to go into public housing. I think everyone in this place would prefer, if possible, that people were able to stay in the private sector. We have only about 10,000 dwellings available here in the ACT. It is a privilege to live in public housing. A lot of people would not want to live in public housing if they had that choice, but unfortunately many Canberrans do not have that choice. It is for that reason that we have to make sure that we limit the number of people that are forced into that predicament and give enough support to people in that situation.
This time last year ACTCOSS put in a budget submission for the 2009-10 budget. In that 2009-10 budget they advocated for an increase in commonwealth rent assistance to ease pressures on people paying 50 per cent or more of their income for rental accommodation. They also sought to establish a rental subsidy scheme in the ACT. They sought to fund the expansion of tenancy support programs that prevent evictions, as indicated in the white paper on homelessness, the white paper that I referred to earlier. They also sought to fund a brokerage service to connect long-term lessees with landlords who are interested in long-term arrangements. The final thing that ACTCOSS recommended with regard to homelessness was to complete the review of the Residential Tenancies Act 1997 and ensure that it included provisions to strengthen the security and amenity provided for tenants.
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