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A Victorian housing program that has helped more than 100 Indigenous people escape or avoid homelessness in the past year has been quietly axed.
Funding for the 12-month pilot program, run through Homes Victoria, ended on June 1. The state government did not say why it had been scrapped but said it had “provided valuable insights into the challenges and complexities that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander renters face in social housing”.
Public housing remains in drastically short supply.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
Victorian Public Tenants Association chief executive Katelyn Butters said there was a “huge and urgent” demand for the tenant advocacy program – which cost more than $300,000 to run – be immediately renewed.
A pre-budget submission from the association urging that funding to program continue was unsuccessful. Treasurer Tim Pallas described the May budget as the most difficult he had ever delivered, slashing spending across departments and programs and raising taxes as the government scrambles to get its ballooning debt under control.
Butters said the housing program was the first of its kind in Victoria, offering Aboriginal people access to free and confidential advice and supporting them to secure social housing in a culturally safe way.
“The loss of funding means this service just doesn’t exist anymore,” she said.
“We’ve basically given people a lifeline to improved housing outcomes, and then we are just snatching it away again when there is a clear and urgent need for this service to continue.”
The association said those helped by the program included a young Aboriginal man with a disability and spinal cancer, who was almost left homeless in Broadmeadows in Melbourne’s north-west, after his father died recently.
It also helped several Aboriginal women fleeing violent relationships to secure safe social housing with their children. An Aboriginal man who had been homeless for more than four years was also given permanent housing with the support of the program.
The tenants’ association said Aboriginal people were 15 times more likely than other Australians to experience homelessness due to racism, dispossession of land, profound economic disadvantage and cultural oppression.
A Homes Victoria spokesman said it acknowledged the importance of culturally safe services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social housing renters.
“Homes Victoria is committed to improving housing outcomes for Aboriginal Victorians,” he said. “We’re expanding the Aboriginal Private Rental Assistance Program and increasing the capacity of Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations to become housing providers.”
The spokesman said the Big Housing Build was increasing social housing available for Aboriginal Victorians with 10 per cent of all new social dwellings earmarked for Aboriginal households.
Butters said in light of the Indigenous Voice referendum and the Victorian Treaty negotiations, such programs should be prioritised.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics recent homelessness estimates reported a 42 per cent increase in the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Victorians without a home in the five years since the previous census.
This month a report by the Council to Homeless Persons compared data from the 2021 census with the previous survey in 2016, finding homelessness had increased alarmingly across the state in the past five years.
The electorate of South Barwon, which takes in parts of greater Geelong, had the biggest rise, reporting a 465 per cent surge.
News of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander program being axed comes days after another project to build affordable homes in the Fitzroy Gasworks redevelopment was paused, a move described by Yarra independent councillor Stephen Jolly as “absolutely outrageous”.
Jolly is one of a growing number of voices demanding that every new property development in Victoria include a mandatory quota of social housing as the state’s housing crisis continues to intensify.
In April, it was revealed the number of families waiting for public housing in Victoria jumped to another record – increasing by 3000 households in a year – despite the Andrew’s government’s $5.3 billion Big Housing Build program, aimed at adding 12,000 social and affordable homes to the state.
More than 57,600 families were on a waiting list seeking housing last December, while another 9500 households already in housing hoped to move to a more suitable property.
For 24/7 crisis support run by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, contact 13YARN (13 92 76).
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