The Cook Labor Government has a “housing first” policy to solve homelessness in WA — but no houses.
Don’t take my word for it. Evidence presented to the parliamentary committee set up to investigate the funding of homelessness services in WA made exactly that point.
In a recent report from the Standing Committee on Estimates and Financial Operations, evidence from Centacare, the provider of the Housing First Support Service in Geraldton, states: “The difficulty is just trying to get some people homed so that we can then offer that wraparound support, whereas at the moment we are offering the wraparound support, but we do not have the homes to be able to fully help these people.”
The people who work in the sector and who are closest to the issue will tell you that the pressures on housing in WA are getting worse, not better.
There is a particular spotlight on the issue this week because this week is National Homelessness Week.
While this is an opportunity to acknowledge the work of the many individuals and organisations working to reduce homelessness, it’s also important to use the chance to come to grips with the extent of the problem.
The fact is, private rental vacancy rates continue to grind lower, putting enormous pressure on people seeking to enter the rental market or move somewhere more affordable as rents steadily rise.
A greater percentage of weekly pay cheques are being used for rent or mortgages as people battle to keep up.
Inflationary pressures are impacting on every single item in the household budget, and housing is a big-ticket expense.
In an opinion piece in The West Australian earlier this week, Homelessness Minster John Carey wrote of the significant impact on an individual’s life of being able to get off the streets and into housing.
It was the genuinely touching story of Snoop, a resident of Boorloo Bidee Mia, a low-barrier supported facility in the Perth CBD.
“I’ve been to hell. Now, I’m out of hell. It’s like a million dollars to me, this place and my room,” Snoop said of being housed.
The people at Centacare and other organisations know that, to quote Mr Carey, “homelessness is complex, it intersects with many other deep social, health and economic issues: trauma, family and domestic violence, mental health conditions, and disruptive life events”.
You can’t begin to solve any of those complex issues without housing.
The wraparound services to deal with everything else are so much harder to implement if the persons involved don’t even have a home.
And this is the tough bit for Premier Roger Cook and Mr Carey. They need to be honest with West Australians.
Despite the significant financial investment in social housing in recent budgets, the total number of social homes in this State is about where it was when Labor come to office in 2017. The reason: four years of inaction between 2017 and 2021, when homes were sold or demolished and not replaced.
That delay in building the stock of homes was then exacerbated by COVID-19 and the subsequent worker shortages, supply chain issues and the over-stimulus of the housing market with State and Federal handouts.
It has been so difficult to get projects off the ground that the Government’s signature policy response to homelessness, the Common Ground housing projects in Perth and Mandurah, have not even started. They were announced three years ago.
The result is that the social housing waitlist has blown out to over 19,000 applicants which represents more than 34,000 people, some facing years of uncertainty waiting for housing.
There has been some response on crisis accommodation and Boorloo Bidee Mia is a good example, however, all the crisis accommodation providers report that there is nowhere to transition people to because no housing solutions exist.
Even Boorloo, which was promoted as a 100-bed facility when announced, has capped out at about 65 people capacity, and the residents are staying for long periods of time.
Finding the solutions to homelessness is a difficult task and deserves serious attention and input from all levels of government, the Opposition, the community services sector, those with lived experience and many others.
Mr Carey has said he is keen to try new and novel approaches to solving this problem. He might care to look closely at the 57 recommendations of the Parliamentary inquiry into funding homelessness. Many of those recommendations the Government is making some headway on. Many more need his attention.
Snoop described homelessness as a “hell” and reminded us of the overwhelmingly positive impact on his life of being given a safe and secure home to get him off the streets.
Sadly, far too many of WA’s homeless remain stuck in purgatory — waiting for a home with little hope in sight.
Steve Martin is shadow housing minister.