Page 1143 - Week 03 - Thursday, 18 March 2010
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2006 census, they comprised 19.7 per cent of people staying at homeless accommodation and 3.8 per cent of rough sleepers.
In addressing this topic today, I would like to refer to the review being conducted by the ACT government Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services into homelessness services. The discussion paper issued by the department in November 2009 provides points of insight about our future funding situation, given the changes in federal government policy. It is concerning that our ACT government is being asked by the federal government to achieve more outcomes with less funding into the future.
As I have noted previously in the Assembly, while there has been a significant investment in housing through the federal stimulus funding, the concern is what will happen when this funding ends and the changes to the federal-state housing agreement begin to impact. According to the discussion paper, funding for the ACT under the national affordable housing agreement declines from 2.2 per cent of total funding in 2008-09 to 1.9 per cent in 2010-12, an approximate funding loss of $2.2 million. A further reduction to 1.6 per cent is expected by 2015-16.
Under the old supported accommodation assistance program, the ACT received 3.6 per cent of national funding. I think it is worth remembering that, several years back in 2004, the federal government also decreased that funding to the ACT. The ACT government tried to cover this loss but, due to the 2006-07 functional review, the ACT government cut back on this further.
So while we may face a decrease in funding, there are some worthwhile goals being set out in the government’s future homelessness policy. For example, by 2013 the government is aiming for a decrease of seven per cent in the number of people who are homeless. The federal and ACT governments’ reform priorities for homelessness services are focused on an increase of wraparound services to ensure that long-term positive outcomes are achieved. There will also be a focus on reducing the number of accommodation transitions.
The Greens are supportive of the housing first model, as it is premised on the notion that housing is a basic human right and so should not be denied to anyone. The housing first model attempts to give a homeless person a house straight away that they can stay in and then receive wraparound services to assist the sustainability of their tenancy. This is in contrast to the continuum housing model, where a homeless person is taken to emergency shelter, to transitional housing to public housing.
The housing first model does require access to a large amount of housing stock, and there are concerns about the program’s viability, as public housing was cut significantly under the Howard Liberal government years. Already the ACT features a shortage of housing properties for those people who are on very low incomes, and the waiting list for public housing is growing, despite having tighter eligibility criteria.
Already there is a great bottleneck in accommodation support services, with few exit points to offer to clients. It is critical, therefore, that the ACT government vigorously commits to its goals of working towards public housing making up 10 per cent of
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