WAITING times for public housing will continue to blow out, Wyndham welfare groups say, following a record low spend on new properties in last week’s state budget.
Social housing acquisitions have been slashed by nearly 40 per cent following the completion of the federal government’s stimulus measures, which provided a one-off funding injection to the sector. Statewide, 710 properties will be acquired during 2013-14, down from 1150 last year and more than 3800 in 2010-11.
Housing advocates fear reduced funding will do little to ease the wait list of 3800 vulnerable people at the Sunshine housing office. They say the list includes nearly 1000 people in Wyndham alone.
UnitingCare Werribee Support and Housing chief executive Carol Muir said many were left with no place to turn. “Demand certainly hasn’t decreased, and the reality is that at both national and state level there is going to be less and less funding available for public housing,” she said.
Mother-of-four Tarnya Dingovski lives in a two-bedroom public housing unit in Werribee and has been on the wait list as a ‘priority transfer’ for a bigger property since August. Her children, one of whom has autism and attention deficit disorder, had outgrown the tiny unit and the space constraints were making life “impossible”.
Opposition housing spokesman Richard Wynne criticised the government’s “paltry” target for new public housing. A government spokeswoman said the locations of 2013-14 acquisitions were yet to be finalised, but the program would build on more than 990 social housing properties currently in Wyndham.
