One of the country’s leading providers of housing support, Mission Australia, believes Federal and State/Territory governments must work together to create a coordinated National Housing Strategy after a report to the United Nations’ Human Rights Council has declared Australia is in the grip of a serious “housing crisis”.

The report, the work of the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing (and which is scheduled for presentation to the Council in Geneva on Monday, 11 June), found that “reductions in public housing stock, soaring private rental rates, an acknowledged housing affordability crisis and no real reduction in the number of homeless” had contributed to the crisis and that a “clear, consistent, long-term and holistic housing strategy” was needed.

Mission Australia’s CEO, Toby Hall, said the report gave an accurate description of many of the challenges facing housing support agencies as they struggled to cope with the number of homeless people and regularly turned individuals and families away because of lack of room.

“The problem in Australia with housing is acute, particularly among Indigenous communities and the thousands of low-income people living in ‘housing stress’ who are spending up to half their income on rent,” Mr Hall said.

“Many of the problems highlighted in the report ring true with Mission Australia’s experiences and I hope that the Federal and State/Territory governments don’t dismiss its recommendations out of hand, instead, that they use it as an impetus for concerted action.

“From our perspective, one of the report’s chief recommendations – that Federal and State Governments work together to generate a National Housing Strategy – is an absolute must.

“A strategy that, among other things, 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. Home ownership among non-Indigenous Australians is 70 per cent, among Indigenous people, it’s 30 per cent, and far too many live in overcrowded and poor quality housing;
• generate an environment which encourages private equity involvement in coming up with creative solutions to tackling affordability and homelessness;
• 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.

“It’s appropriate that the report is from the UN’s Human Rights Council – adequate housing is a human right. 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. Let’s hope this report spurs our leaders on to doing something about it,” said Mr Hall.

Media inquiries: Paul Andrews 0409 665 495 or (02) 9219 2080

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