Homelessness action group standing against inaction

ANGELA co-founded Homelessness Action Geelong after showing long-term concern for community members facing the impacts of the housing crisis.

Since going live with the activism group, Angela said there has been a “tonne of interest” as housing security continues to impact a major cohort of people living in Geelong.

“At our region’s entry point the typical homeless demographic has changed and you are seeing working people now presenting as homeless so that is a big shift from five years ago,” she said.

The City of Greater Geelong reported that more than half of the 7,200 families in need of housing would be unable to obtain it as a result of only 3,300 properties being available in the municipality.

For a single person on JobSeeker or someone on Youth Allowance, the options were even less with available housing stock in the single digits across the country.

“We are in a very wealthy country and housing is one of the fundamental rights, a real human cost and as a community we need to stand up and fight for each other,” she said.

“I think in terms of what we have seen as a government response, the issue of homelessness has been neglected and it is really culminating the disaster.

“We saw in COVID-19 that homelessness is a political choice, money was found for emergency accommodation for the homeless cohort, now women and children are back to sleeping in the car.”

Homelessness Action Geelong are beginning to call on all levels of government to take immediate action following the “tokenistic budget”.

“I think the budget shows that this federal government has no intention to try and fix this crisis,” she said.

The federal government announced $164.8 million for women escaping domestic violence, as well as $12.6 million over three years to provide a Safe Places program and $129 million for funding legal services.

During the budget announcement the federal government said one woman is killed by their partner every nine days in Australia.

While women fleeing domestic violence make up 64 per cent of homelessness statistics in Geelong, Angela said without addressing the social housing issue these women will not have anywhere to go.

“New money for social housing is the only way out of the housing crisis, that is something we all know,” she said.

“One of the incentives to provide $1500 cash payments to women leaving violence and a further $3500 for expenses might help some people, but the issue of limited housing remains the same, there is no housing.”

CEO of The Sexual Assault & Family Violence Centre Helen Bolton said the increase in demand from women needing assistance exceeded their resources this financial year.

“Since July 2020, our organisation has seen a 28 per cent increase in requests for support from women, children and young people for family violence case management … by the end of March 2021, we had exceeded our annual funding target,” she said.

Homelessness Action Geelong believes the commitment to women escaping domestic violence is relatively small considering it is Australian-wide and stretched among a number of programs.

“In Victoria we need up to 50,000 housing properties alone,” she said.

“The budget they have provided is just a drop in the ocean, it won’t fix anything.”

According to Angela the First Home Owners Grants are also leaving the most vulnerable behind as to receive a $25,000 boost the money must be used on new builds with a minimum spend of $150,000.

The Home Builder and New Home Guarantee scheme has been cited as one of the reasons why the strain on regional housing has increased as more people relocate from the city to access the benefits.

“Offering an extra $20,000 to people will only help those who can already afford to break into the market,” Angela said.

“It is putting the market price up because people think they can stretch that extra $20,000.

“There is a whole layer of our community that miss out on what other people consider basic opportunity.”