By Sarah Langmore
Western Homelessness Networker
What does your home offer you?
Mine gives me peace, warmth, cool, a place to retreat from the world, a place for privacy and a place to socialise with friends and family. It provides a place to hold precious things that people have given me, to store and prepare food, to be creative.
Now imagine being without that…
It is largely because my home means so much to me that I have worked for over 30 years in homelessness and family violence – to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to have a safe place to live. Yet in those 30 years I have never seen the housing crisis as bad as it is now.
My role is to support the homelessness services in the West. They are staffed by the most wonderful, committed workers but we are all so distressed at present about the impact of the housing crisis in the West and the limited capacity we have to help people find housing.
October 10 is World Homelessness Day – a time to think about all those people who do not have a safe, stable and affordable place to live.
Families presenting to homelessness services have lost their home because they can no longer afford rental or mortgage payments, single people are unable to find any affordable rental in Melbourne, and people who are working are increasingly finding they can’t afford increasing rents.
When people need assistance because they have lost their home, they present to one of two ‘front end’ homelessness services in Melbourne’s west. Just one of these services has to turn 800 people away every month without even an initial appointment.
The growing number of people experiencing homelessness in the West is a direct result of the housing crisis we are experiencing– both in terms of supply and affordability.
Homelessness in Melbourne’s West
Melbourne’s west experiences this more than almost any other area in Victoria. The last Census showed that nearly 1/5th of all those who were without a safe home on Census night were in Melbourne’s west.
There are so many people on the waiting lists for social (both public and community) housing in Melbourne’s west that we could fill that housing twice over if it all suddenly became vacant.
An absence of safe, affordable housing is driving these marked increases in the numbers of households experiencing homelessness and the high numbers of people approved for priority access to social housing. Our supply of housing is insufficient to house our population. Plan Melbourne estimates that Melbourne will need an additional 2.3 million new homes by 2051 to meet this current and growing need.
Melton and Wyndham are growing faster than any other area of Melbourne and the supply of housing has not kept up with this population growth.
Several decades of Government policy has led to this situation. State and Federal Government policy has focussed on providing tax concessions/incentives to the private market, rather than on constructing affordable housing.
The Federal Government has then further subsidised private landlords by allocating Commonwealth Rent Assistance to low income renters of private rental accommodation.
The funds allocated by Government to Commonwealth Rent Assistance ($4.9B in 2021/22 combined with the tax concessions to landlords (funds lost to Government), are far more than the funding allocated to construction of social housing, with none of the renter benefits.
The consequence has been that more than 10 times the funds have been allocated to enable people to purchase 2, 3, 4, 5 homes, whilst almost completely ceasing to fund construction of affordable housing to ensure that everyone has access to one safe home.
Having a stable and affordable home is key to good health, mental health, stability, and capacity to participate in society. It is not acceptable, in a country as wealthy as Australia, that so many Australians do not have a safe, stable home.
The Houses at Parliament campaign
In Australia, homelessness is defined as being without a secure, stable, safe and private living space or the ability to control that space. This includes people sleeping in boarding houses, sleeping in their cars, couch surfing and living in unsafe situations. It also captures people living in insecure or inadequate housing.
Access to housing is a basic human right and ensuring provision of this right is a core responsibility at all levels of Government.
So, the Homelessness Sector has established the ‘Houses at Parliament’ campaign, asking the Victorian and Federal Governments to commit to building at least 60,000 new social housing properties now and to implement a comprehensive plan to END homelessness.
We asked homelessness and allied services to fold origami houses and to display them across the State during Homelessness Week this year. Our goal was to fold 60,000 origami houses, to reflect the current need for social housing. Over 73,000 houses were folded and we displayed 6,000 of them on the steps of Parliament House.
You can help us
We would love your assistance with this campaign. Could you fold origami houses and display them in your workplace, shop, a public space near you on World Homelessness Day October 10, and keep them there until next year’s Homelessness Week in August?
We have developed a campaign kit (Campaign Kit_2024 (vhn.org.au), which includes ideas about how you can display any houses that you fold. We have a tally showing how many houses have been folded across Victoria: Houses At Parliament | Houses At Parliament (vhn.org.au).
We have posters and social media posts you can use: A3 Posters_2024 (vhn.org.au) and How to get involved | Houses At Parliament (vhn.org.au)
The Western Homelessness (WHN)
The Western Homelessness Network is the network of over 100 homelessness and family violence programs working in Melbourne’s west. You can find out more about the Network here: Overview of the Western Homelessness Network (nwhn.net.au).
You can send a photo of your display to: sarah@wombat.org.au
