Page 4400 - Week 12 - Thursday, 24 October 2019
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We know that lack of housing is a social issue; we know that there is a lack of social and affordable rental housing, that rents are high and vacancies are low in the private rental market—all the things that Mr Parton talked about. We do not need to rehash the things that we already know, although I guess we do that many times. But what this motion is trying to do is something different: to come at this issue from a different perspective and better establish the actual financial costs of homelessness to the territory government, because it could be that if we look at this we will find it easier to take a different, more compassionate approach.
The cost of homelessness was given international prominence by a New Yorker article in 2006 titled “Million-Dollar Murray”. It reported on Murray Barr, who is no relation, I understand, to our Chief Minister. He is in fact an ex-marine who lives in Reno, Nevada. A police officer who knew Murray, as well as other rough sleepers in Reno, took an interest in these men and possible solutions to their problems. He ended up concluding that it was going to cost a million dollars to not help Murray.
A significant body of work of research and financial modelling has examined this question. Most of it has been done overseas but some of it has been done in Australia. The first thing to note is that people who are homeless tend to be heavy users of government services, particularly health and justice services, and of course these are services provided by the ACT government. The appallingly low rate of Newstart, inadequate commonwealth investment in the national housing and homelessness agreement, and the historic housing debt carried by the ACT are federal issues. There is not much we can do about them. But we do have the capacity to spend our money on other things, and we do have a strong interest and responsibility in providing health and justice services.
Health is the biggest single line item in the ACT budget, so clearly anything that we can do to reduce these costs should be looked at. That is why my colleague Mr Rattenbury has adopted a justice reinvestment approach within his ministerial portfolio. Research in 2008 by researchers from the University of WA found that the healthcare costs of people entering a housing program, the Michael project, were 10 times greater than the rest of the population. A 2007 evaluation of the housing and accommodation support initiative in New South Wales, which provided housing support for people with mental health conditions, found a reduction in hospital costs of $35,000 per person per year, vastly offsetting the costs of running the program.
The largest single attempt conducted by Australian researchers to quantify cost savings to government for the provision of permanent supportive housing with opt-in services to keep people housed was conducted in 2013 in WA by academics from a number of universities. They looked at 204 clients from 47 homelessness services. They looked at the difference, depending on the cohorts of people, and it varied from a saving of $877 for people who are just participating in day programs through to $22,824 savings per year for single men.
This research was built on and followed up in 2016. This time the researchers looked at the health, social and economic benefits of providing public housing and support to formerly homeless people. It found savings to the public health system of nearly
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