Housing issues a ‘perfect storm’

FEDERAL member for Bendigo Lisa Chesters hosted a meeting last week to address Greater Bendigo’s housing crisis.

Participating organisations included Haven Homesafe, Ark Justice, The Centre for Non-Violence, and Bendigo Community Health.

“I organised today’s roundtable because I wanted to hear firsthand the challenges that we have locally,” said Ms Chesters.

The MP said housing and affordability information received at the Federal level is based upon 2021 census data and out of date.

“I thought let’s get everyone in a room from real estate to homelessness services to tenancy organisations to tell us what’s happening, what are they hearing,” Ms Chesters said.

“And then to tell me what we can do at a federal level to really help.”

Ms Chesters said she had come away from the discussion with her eyes wide open.

“This isn’t just a short-term problem, this is a longer term problem and we have to fundamentally change and urgently work towards solving the housing crisis that we have. Everyone’s affected,” she said.

The meeting resulted in a task list which Ms Chesters said she’ll use to drive action within the Federal Government.

Included on this list were suggestions for the increased support social services in Greater Bendigo with operational costs and accessibility.

CEO of Haven Homesafe, Trudi Ray, said the meeting was an opportunity for stakeholders in Bendigo to unite and find ways to make a collective impact in the community.

Haven Homesafe has started to see a greater range of demographics accessing their services as affordability has declined.

“It’s really not good,” said Ms Ray. “Only 2.3 per cent of rental properties at the moment can be obtained by people on Job Seeker, so only 2.3 per cent are affordable.

“None of the issues are new, the currency of it is much more critical now that visibility of it seems to be much more prevalent in terms of what we’re seeing locally.”

Ms Chesters said the region was going through a perfect storm that had started a generation ago.

“You can unpack all of the bad government policies that have led us to being in this crisis, but we now need to look at policy solutions,” she said.