The Victorian Government's Housing Statement has failed to commit to building desperately needed social housing that will address the state's crisis, according to Council to Homeless Persons.
CHP has welcomed measures to make renting fairer and overdue improvements to 44 existing high-rise public housing buildings.
Council to Homeless Persons chief executive officer Deborah Di Natale said the package fell short on social housing commitments.
"The State Government appears to have missed a critical opportunity to tackle the most serious housing crisis in living memory," Ms Di Natale said.
"Behind the big headline numbers, there's crumbs for social housing.
"We need at least 60,000 new public and community homes to be built in Victoria over a decade. Unfortunately there's nothing like that in these announcements.
"The grim reality is without a major increase in social housing, which accounts for just 2.9 per cent of all dwellings across the state, we're not going to stop rising homelessness.
"The human and economic consequences of not addressing the crisis we face are immense.
"We have tens of thousands of people experiencing homelessness each night and on social housing waiting lists. The government needs to be up front with what this housing statement means for them.
"The government should outline exactly how many extra public and community dwellings will be built because of this announcement.
"Anything we can do to drag Victoria off the bottom of the national social housing rankings is incredibly welcome, so providing developers with incentives isn't necessarily a bad thing.
"But solely relying on the private sector to do the job of government in building social housing is not the answer. The current crisis shows exactly what market failure looks for our most vulnerable people.
"Our high-rise public housing has been neglected for decades so those refurbishments are welcome.
"Banning rental bidding, allowing transferable bonds and cracking down on landlords putting rents up for a year after a tenant has been evicted will make things fairer.
"A modest charge on short-stay accommodation is a sensible way to fund desperately needed public and community housing but the amount of revenue that will raise pales in comparison to what's needed.”
Contact details:
Matt Coughlan 0400 561 480 / [email protected]