LOWER HUNTER SOCIAL HOUSING
Ms JODIE HARRISON (Charlestown) (19:28): This is not the first time I have stood in this place and spoken of the housing crisis currently gripping the Lower Hunter, and I know you are experiencing it in your electorate too, Madam Temporary Speaker. This is not the first time I have implored the Government to act to address the critical shortage of housing in my electorate, and I fear this will not be the last time I stand here to advocate for the many vulnerable people in New South Wales who require what is a basic human right: shelter. In February, I spoke of the desperate need for more social housing in the Charlestown electorate. I spoke of the unprecedented demand from women with children seeking the assistance of specialist homelessness services in the Lower Hunter. Many of those women are fleeing domestic violence. Since that time, things have gone from bad to grim.
When it comes to trying to find a place to rent in the Lower Hunter, you will be required to line up with 100 or more people just to inspect a rental property. The rental vacancy rate for the Lower Hunter is 0.7 per cent but in my electorate of Charlestown the rental vacancy rate has plunged to an alarming 0.4 per cent. I know the member for Lismore spoke about the rental vacancy rates in her electorate earlier tonight. At the same time, in parts of the Charlestown electorate rents have increased by as much as 30 per cent in just one year. In the past 12 months, the Hunter Tenants' Advice and Advocacy Service has taken almost 500 phone calls from tenants in the Hunter facing eviction and the service reports a doubling in the number of calls from tenants facing a "no grounds" eviction.
This is not an issue just affecting the Lower Hunter, though. Just last week the April Anglicare Rental Affordability Snapshot found there was only one rental property in the whole of New South Wales that was affordable for a single low-income person. Every measure in that report, which surveyed 74,000 rental properties, found a deteriorating situation for low-income households compared to the previous year. The report notes that the housing affordability crisis has now extended to regional areas, and don't we in the Lower Hunter know it! What happens to people when they cannot find anywhere to live? They become homeless people. In the Lower Hunter, emergency and crisis accommodation and all the refuges are full. They are full because there is no housing for these people to transition into.
What is meant to be short-term crisis and emergency accommodation has become long term because there are simply no exit points. There is no accommodation to move these people into. People who cannot enter crisis and temporary accommodation because there is currently none available can access the State Government's temporary accommodation budget, but only for 28 days per year. Specialist homelessness services in the Hunter have reported that some people have used up all of their annual temporary accommodation allocation. These people are at the end of the road in terms of support available to them. These people are on the street. They are facing the coming winter living in their cars, under houses or in tents. Just last week my office worked with a 75‑year-old woman who had been living in her car since January. She is not the only elderly woman who has reached out to my office for assistance in recent months.
I am sure I was not the only Lower Hunter MP who read, with great surprise, news reports on Friday in which the Premier was quoted as saying a fast rail link between Sydney and Newcastle would help ease Sydney's housing crisis. Premier, we cannot house our own people, let alone Sydney's. We cannot allow homelessness to become the status quo. We cannot allow homelessness to become the new normal. We must take every step and every measure to ensure that every member of our community has somewhere affordable to live. In the short term the Premier must urgently act to include the reduction and prevention of homelessness for women and children into the Premier's priority list, she must extend the temporary accommodation budget beyond 28 days and she must end "no cause" evictions. In the long term, the Government must build more social housing as a safety net for the most vulnerable in our community and implement every possible policy lever to make housing more affordable and accessible for all. The experiences we are having in our electoral offices now are shameful. We must do something to fix housing and homelessness in our State.
