Page 2362 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 5 August 2015
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The second biggest gap was the inability to find social housing and private rental accommodation for people moving out of the specialist homelessness service sector. The report said:
Gaps are also evident for certain service user groups who are less likely to be able to access support services, less likely to have their needs met, or less likely to have stable housing on exit. The following groups were reported by services to be less likely to be able to access SHS—
specialist homelessness service—
accommodation supports due to a mismatch between their needs and eligibility for specific service providers: women with children not experiencing or fleeing domestic violence, particularly women with adolescent male dependants; couples over 25; young people under 15 years of age; refugees and people with pets.
The report said:
… young people were more likely to have an unmet need for accommodation and more likely to exit into unstable accommodation. The analysis also found that women were more likely to have an unmet need for accommodation … While those with poor accommodation situations on entry were more likely to have their housing needs met, they were nine times more likely to experience an exit into unstable accommodation than other clients.
Exits into stable accommodation in the ACT have declined. Applications for public housing in the ACT have more than doubled since 2008. Finally, many public housing applicants still have high expectations of being placed in a preferred public housing property when that outcome is not likely to be achieved. Earlier today we spoke about the issue of the public housing waiting list.
The findings of the report are quite alarming, I believe, although the ACT government media release put a very positive slant on it. It says that applications for public housing have more than doubled since 2008.
During estimates we heard that putting people who are relocating out of public housing along Northbourne Avenue on a waiting list is in addition to the priority high needs and standard waiting lists. So the ACT government is making the wait times for applicants on the priority, high needs and standard waiting and transfer lists even longer—even longer than the figures we spoke about in question time today. How is that going to help address the increasing demand on our public housing waiting lists, which have more than doubled since 2008? Of course, we all know, and we have said it before in this place, that the ACT Labor-Greens government are relocating public housing tenants out of Northbourne Avenue so they can use the land for the light rail project.
The homelessness landscape in the ACT, from 2012 figures, was that 1,758 people were experiencing homelessness in the ACT. People on the ACT’s priority housing waiting list will wait, on average, two years. People on the ACT standard housing waiting list will wait, on average, two years and three months. As at 3 August, there
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