The state’s advocacy organization for low-income housing consumers has expressed cautious support for the housing component of the NSW state budget delivered by the treasurer, Michael Costa MLC, in Parliament today.
Shelter NSW’s executive officer, Mary Perkins, said that the government’s continued support for a social housing sector providing affordable rental housing to very-low income households was welcome.
The Department of Housing has managed to commit to modest growth in the overall sector, though the most important contributing element of this is headleasing dwellings from private owners, rather than increasing the supply of dwellings owned by nonprofit landlords (government and nongovernment). The total amount of dwellings in the social housing sector is expected to grow by 196 dwellings. However, the total number of dwellings in the social housing sector predicted at the end of 2007-08, at 148,368 dwellings, is less than the total number of dwellings predicted for the end of this financial year. Last year’s budget papers estimated there would be 148,533 dwellings at the end of 2006-07. Instead, there were 148,172.
‘Increasing supply by some hundreds is not going to take a big bite at the problem, being the housing stress experienced by tens of thousands of low-income people renting in tight rental housing markets’, she said.
Ms Perkins also welcome a capital enhancement of $25 million to the Department, which is the third tranche of a 4-year capital enhancement agreed to by Treasury 3 years ago as part of a bailout of the Department because of high operating costs and limits on rent revenue that can be got from the Department’s very-low income customers.
‘However the promised enhancement was for $190 million over 4 years, and with only more financial year to go in the period of the bailout agreement, that means we will be looking to Treasury delivering a fourth and final tranche of $120 million in next year’s budget’, Ms Perkins said.
A highlight of the housing assistance budget was a suite of initiatives to expand the community (nongovernment) housing sector, which had been previously announced by the minister for housing, Matt Brown MP.
‘The centrepiece of the initiative, the Affordable Housing Innovations Fund, is largely funded from a grant from the Rental Bond Board, rather than from the Consolidated Fund, however’, she noted.
Ms Perkins has also expressed concern about funding for Aboriginal housing programs.
The Aboriginal Housing Office is significantly dependent on Commonwealth government funding for key housing programs to Aboriginal peoples, whose housing circumstances are generally not as good as those of non-Aboriginal people, as measured by lower incidence of home-ownership and higher representation in private rental housing, social housing, and crisis housing services. We are very concerned about the Commonwealth government’s decision to replace the Indigenous Community Housing Infrastructure Program with a new Australian Remote Indigenous Accommodation Program from 2008-09 under which funding for New South Wales could be jeopardized because this state’s Aboriginal population is more urbanized.
‘We would like to see how the Government is planning to face the various housing challenges on a range of fronts. A promised Affordable Housing Strategy is now one year overdue. The people of New South Wales would be in a better position to see how the Government thinks housing unaffordability should be addressed if we could see that Strategy’, Ms Perkins concluded.
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