Page 1545 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2016
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capacity for houses in the affordable range and provide new affordable housing supply through private financing and other measures.
The government seem to have struggled so much in this regard over the past few years that I provided them with a bit of a pick list of things that they could choose from to help with the affordable housing supply. They have been in government for 15 years now and they cannot get it right. I am happy to provide some assistance to them, some suggestions, because this is important to all Canberrans. It is important not just to you and me here; it is important to our children and our grandchildren that they can have affordable housing.
The ACT government is responsible for responding to our affordable housing crisis as well as to the homelessness that we see in our community. Without a greater supply of affordable housing properties, we will never be able to solve housing or homelessness. You need to have a safe, secure place for someone to rest their head and then help them address the issues that have contributed to or maintained their homelessness.
We call this the “housing first” model. The government often talks about this approach with the Common Ground approach in Gungahlin. Giving people somewhere safe and secure to call their own first and then providing them with the support that they need are what we need to address homelessness in the ACT—not churning people through the homelessness services, the fabulous homelessness services, that we have. We have a lack of exits from homelessness into housing for people because of the demand that we have and the lack of supply in our public housing sector.
There are things that we can be doing right now to start addressing our affordable housing crisis. We just need a government that will sit up and listen and take some action on this important issue.
The ACTCOSS and Shelter consortium released what is called Stories of home recently, a range of stories from people around Canberra outlining their issues with affordable housing in the ACT, how they may have ended up homeless in some instances or the struggles that they have had to find somewhere. Importantly, and usefully, the report breaks the lack of affordable housing up by electorate. It is salutary reading if you have not already looked at this particular report.
One of the stories I would like to point out to you is the story of Penny, who was driven by her own experience of housing affordability to become an advocate on housing issues. As a person with disability and an older woman, she tells a powerful story which highlights housing as a finite resource. I will not go into her full story; you can read that in the booklet. But basically what Penny said was this:
The housing situation here is at crisis point. I couldn’t afford private rent and real estate agents are unwilling to rent to someone on a pension.
Penny’s story is not unique. It is illustrative of a broader problem. It is illustrative of what is being talked about as an upcoming tsunami of older women experiencing homelessness.
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