Page 4380 - Week 10 - Thursday, 22 September 2011
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assisted approximately 3,500 individuals in the first half of 2011; about 12 per cent of those were people from the private housing market. The assistance provided by the three services includes food packages, financial assistance with outstanding debts, bus tickets and referrals to other programs.
The ACT government also funds Rotary ACT to deliver supplies of food from Foodbank store in Sydney to a range of non-government agencies in the ACT for distribution to those who require assistance. In the last financial year, over 200,000 kilos of food was delivered to the ACT from Foodbank. We also fund Care Inc to provide financial counselling to individuals who are experiencing financial difficulties, to help them to manage their finances. The ACT no-interest loan scheme is also run by Care Financial Counselling.
Other schemes run by the Community Services Directorate include the rental bond loan scheme, which assists low income families to access the private rental market. And members will recall that Housing is currently engaged in an $8 million program to improve energy efficiency in public housing, which will significantly reduce the energy cost for public housing tenants.
These initiatives represent a suite of measures which will make a significant financial contribution to low income households across Canberra.
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (5.12): I thank Ms Bresnan for putting forward this matter of public importance today. I would like to point out to the speakers who have come before me that the topic was low income households in housing stress. I wish to emphasise the words “low income”, because Mr Barr spoke to quite an extent about average income households and Mr Coe spoke on the basis that people really should not need help. That might well be true, Mr Coe, if everyone had average incomes or above. But the nature of statistics is such that not everybody can have an average income or above. In fact, half of us will end up with a less than average income.
Those people with less than average incomes in Canberra are suffering from housing stress. And those people, particularly in the bottom 10 per cent of incomes in Canberra, are probably either in ACT Housing or suffering from housing stress. Those are probably their two options, because even if they are a private owner they will probably be finding the maintenance of their house and the repayments very hard.
One group of low income people who are suffering from housing stress that I particularly want to mention is older women—my peer group and older. Many of us spent considerable time not in the workforce, looking after children, and many of us ended up separating from partners we had been with for a long period and so have ended up with very little money, with very little superannuation and without a house. If people do have a house, it is often one that is getting older and very expensive to maintain or, possibly even more devastatingly, people are in the situation where—they possibly had children, or not—they joined with someone else who did have children and, when that person died, were left in a situation where the partner has generously organised that they have a lifetime lease to stay in the house but they own only part of it. They are not in the position to say, “This house doesn’t suit my needs anymore; I would like to downsize.” That is because with what they would get for selling their existing house they could not move into anything more suitable.
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