One of the country’s leading providers of housing support, Mission Australia, believes homeless people are being left out of the current debate on housing affordability.

Mission Australia Chief Executive Toby Hall, who is visiting Adelaide today/tomorrow, said the emergence of a national housing crisis at a time of almost unequalled economic prosperity in Australia should shock us all into action at a national level.

“This is a black cloud hanging over a rich and lucky country,” Mr Hall said.

“It’s fantastic that housing affordability is becoming a major issue in the lead-up to the federal election,” he said. “But while much of the focus has been rightly on how to help families juggling mortgage repayments or rent, the sharp end of the debate seems to have gone missing – how the lack of housing affordability is impacting on homeless numbers,” he said.

“In South Australia, as in our services across the country, we’re seeing an impact at both ‘ends’ of supported accommodation,” he said. “We’re seeing more people who need emergency support because they’ve lost the roof over their heads for a variety of reasons. But we’re also having more trouble helping them to move back into the community when they’ve addressed their own personal issues because there’s simply nowhere affordable for them to go.”

Mr Hall is visiting Adelaide this week – in the lead-up to National Homeless Person’s Week (August 5-12) - to advance plans for the proposed Mission Australia Hindmarsh Centre, a ‘one stop shop’ for homeless young South Australians which would lead the nation in its approach to the dual problems of youth homelessness and drug and alcohol abuse.

He will also meet with Housing Minister Jay Weatherill and South Australia’s Commissioner for Social Inclusion Monsignor David Cappo as part of Mission Australia’s campaign for Australia to develop a national housing strategy.

Mission Australia launched the campaign in the wake of a United Nations Human Rights Council report that declared Australia was in the grip of a serious “housing crisis” due to reductions in public housing stock, soaring private rental rates, the acknowledged housing affordability crisis and no real reduction in the number of homeless people.

Mr Hall said the report gave an accurate description of many of the challenges facing community service organisations like Mission Australia as they regularly turned homeless individuals and families away because of lack of room.

“Too many families and young people are being forced to seek a safe roof over their heads from our services here in South Australia, as around the country,” he said. “We simply don’t have the capacity to respond to the need.”

Mission Australia is calling on State and Federal Governments to work together to generate a National Housing Strategy, which would:

• create more affordable housing in the heart of our capital cities, combating the trend of low-income people living on the suburban fringe and travelling hours to work;
• increase the stock of public housing (there are 30,000 less public houses now than 1996);
• address the housing crisis among Indigenous Australians
• look at ways of reducing or abolishing the varying rates of stamp duty, establishment taxes and infrastructure costs where they apply to the development of affordable housing; and
• tackle the root causes behind the 100,000 Australians who are homeless on any one night.

“In a country as wealthy as Australia, and with our small population, we should be doing a better job at making sure all our citizens have access to affordable and sustainable housing,” said Mr Hall.

“We can’t just let the housing affordability debate be about the ‘hip pocket nerve’. For growing numbers of Australians, including many families and children, it’s about the very basic right of having a safe roof over our heads.”

For more information or to arrange an interview with Toby Hall, please contact:Chris Rann, Rann Communication 08 8211 7771