Meeting housing needs

It’s not enough to spend money on housing assistance, you have to spend it well. The programs you fund have to meet the needs of the households they are intended to help. Housing needs to be:

• affordable, leaving households with enough money left over after they have paid for their housing to afford other necessities
• appropriate, in that it meets the cultural, physical and lifestyle needs of each household
• accessible, so that people with disabilities can live comfortably and so that their home can be adapted to meet their changing needs as they age.

In recent years Shelter has done a lot of work on how housing assistance meets the needs of various households. Some of our activities include:

• working with Aboriginal community organisations to support their desire for housing that is culturally appropriate
• advocating for policies which better meet the needs of public housing tenants, including better allocation processes and better estate management
• investigating the needs of particular groups in the community such as students and large families
• advocating on housing issues that contribute to homelessness.

Our recent work on meeting housing needs includes:

• a report, ‘We look after our neighbours here’: support services for NSW social housing tenants, Shelter Brief 52 (December 2012)
  
• a report, Under the radar: the impact of housing on the access of regional students to higher education in Sydney, Shelter Brief 51 (September 2012)
  
• a submission on the ‘Future directions for specialist homelessness services’ consultation paper (30 August 2012)
• a submission on the Exposure Draft Boarding Houses Bill 2012 (14 August 2012)
• a submission to a Senate inquiry into the adequacy of the allowance payment system (3 August 2012).