CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS
Ms BOELE (Bradfield) (16:06): We are one of the richest countries in the world, but we have rising homelessness. Three million Australians are at risk, up 63 per cent in just the last five years. Well over half of all low-income earners are in rental stress.
Even in my electorate, one of the most economically advantaged in the country, there is skyrocketing need for stable, secure, affordable rental housing. I recently heard from housing and homelessness support providers in my electorate during Homelessness Week—services like CatholicCare, which runs a community hub offering support to people across northern Sydney who are at risk of experiencing homelessness, and community housing providers like Link Wentworth and St George Community Housing, who help clients navigate years-long waitlists and bewildering bureaucracy.
As well as getting people into homes, staff at these services deliver a range of services to support people staying in homes: healthcare and mental wellbeing services, helping navigate government services, getting kids to school, and providing food and basic toiletries. These are basic building blocks that we all need to live our lives, and organisations like these are pleased that the government is committed to delivering more social and affordable housing—40,000 new homes promised under the National Housing Accord after decades of underinvestment by state and federal governments.
But there is a bit of a catch because, while the money is now flowing into building these incredibly needed homes, there is no additional contribution to the providers who actually help people in desperate need like Link Wentworth and St George. These already overstretched services face even more pressure. The number of people in my community seeking these services has more than tripled in recent years.
Staff are doing their best but are too often forced to turn people away due to underfunding. We can't just pat ourselves on the back for starting the enormous, Herculean effort of building more homes. We need to also provide support to services that are needed to make these homes the transformational opportunities that they can be.
Without more funding for services like Link Wentworth, clients are unlikely to be able to shift from homelessness to long-term stability. As these services have told me, being homeless is not a personal failing, and it's not inevitable. It is the result of policy choices that we make here in this place.
Funding critical services will allow people to stay and thrive in the new homes that our government is building.