Image: Photo: Action for Public Housing/Facebook.
By GRACE JOHNSON
The NSW Budget has incensed housing activists after the state government announced on Tuesday that a $2.2 billion Housing and Infrastructure Plan will only include $224 million in funding for social and affordable housing and homelessness services.
$300 million will also be reinvested into Landcom, with 30 percent of the funds to go towards affordable housing, which is expected to deliver 1,409 homes over the next 16 years – fewer than 100 a year.
NSW Housing Minister Rose Jackson said that the budget was “another step in the right direction as we rebuild our housing system.”
But with NSW facing a shortage of 221,500 public homes and 56,000 people on the public housing wait list, and soaring rates of people experiencing homelessness, activists are heavily criticising the budget, most of which ($1.5 billion) will go towards building infrastructure.
“Little more than crumbs”
Denis Doherty from public housing advocacy group Hands Off Glebe said, “we have little more than crumbs.”
“This is a shameful response to the appalling crisis so many NSW families are facing,” he continued.
“With thousands sleeping rough, couch surfing and sleeping in cars and thousands more facing insecure and inadequate housing, leaving solving the housing crisis to the profit driven private sector and the Federal Government is simply not acceptable.”
Carolyn Ienna, who was recently forced to move out of 82 Wentworth Park Road, insisted on the need to build more public housing, saying, “demolishing public housing in order to move everybody over to community or social housing which is run by private operators is a privatization scam.”
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Growing population
While public housing is disappearing across Sydney with the Waterloo Estate and 82 Wentworth Park Road slated for demolition, the population is rising. According to the 2022 NSW Population Projection, by 2041, Sydney is expected to reach a population of 6.1 million and regional NSW 3.7 million, meaning NSW will have an additional 85,000 people to house each year.
To house the growing population, NSW needs 904,000 homes over the next 20 years, or 45,200 each year, of which 28,500 will need to be in Greater Sydney.
The housing budget has attracted dissatisfaction across the board.
Councillor Yvonne Weldon from City of Sydney said that the government’s investment in Landcom and the Aboriginal Housing Office will deliver much-needed housing. However, “the funding does not match the scale of the housing crisis.”
“The Federal Government’s Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) will help but falls far short of the demand.”
“It’s not just about increasing supply too,” she added.
“On any given night around 10 percent of properties are unoccupied, either because they are vacant investment properties, or they’re used as Airbnb’s in peak times and sit idle at other times.”
“This is exacerbating the problem.”
“Tuesday’s budget was a missed opportunity”
Amy Hains, Acting CEO of Homelessness NSW, said, “Tuesday’s budget was a missed opportunity for meaningful investment to reverse decades of social housing neglect and chronic underfunding of frontline services.”
She referred to the recent research by Homelessness Australia about surging demands for homelessness services, which shows a 10 percent rise in the first three months of 2023.
“It is disappointing to see the NSW government unwilling to match its rhetoric on the housing and homelessness crisis with actual funding.”
Action for Public Housing is organising a National Housing Justice Summit on Sunday 8 October at the Maritime Union, calling for more funding to be given to public housing, rather than social or community housing, and to end the privatisation of public housing.
