Housing Stimulus 

The next phase of our process is to call on governments to invest in housing. This will create work, house vulnerable families, ensure critical workforces may be close to their jobs (hospital workers, child care, aged care e.g.), get financial processes flowing and economic multipliers working.

National Shelter is joining with Community Housing Industry Association (CHIA), Homelessness Australia, Everybody’s Home, University of NSW and others in calling for a stimulus. You can help us spread the message by sharing the media on our socials. We want government to respond with a housing investment in 4 waves:

Eviction Moratorium 

The National Organisation of Tenant Organisations (NATO), via the coordination of the Tenants Union of NSW (TUNSW), has been monitoring the roll out of the national moratorium on evictions. The National Cabinet passed the responsibility to states to implement the moratorium, which has seen a patchy range of measures differing in each state and implemented in some jurisdictions.

It also raises the question of how we might evaluate the move given that there is a paucity of data on evictions in Australia and no single data source to record them in any jurisdiction. 

This table provides a guide to what has happened where, courtesy of TUNSW.

National Ministers Meeting 

National Shelter has been meeting with ministerial staff from Housing Minister and Assistant Treasurer the Hon. Michael Sukkar MP, Senator the Hon. Anne Ruston and Assistant Minister for Community Housing Homelessness and Community Services the Hon. Luke Howarth MP weekly throughout the COVID-19 crisis. We requested these meetings very early and also invited CHIA, Homelessness Australia and Powerhousing to join the meetings to provide input and feedback to Ministers’ offices. 

Our input has helped the establishment of the Evictions Moratorium, identified the need for additional resources to specialist homelessness services, the need to provide immediate housing to rough sleepers and others, requiring the ability to self-isolate. While many of these measures have been implemented by state governments, it has been important to ensure a national approach and provide information to the Federal Ministers’ offices.

Our approach has been in three areas:

A Challenging Time 

In writing this, I’m breaking one of my work rules, which is not to work on Sundays or public holidays. Not for any religious reason but for work life balance. I’ve been working from home for 6 and a half years now, so many of the work practices people are now getting used to have been my normal. It’s important to maintain the balance between work and the rest of life, as my mother always advised: “Work to live, don’t live to work”. Still, extraordinary times mean a few rules get relaxed or broken.

Still, I count myself fortunate to still be working, earning, and contributing. This crisis is only beginning to unfold and while Australia has done well on the viral frontier, the social and economic consequences (which, as always, are intertwined) are only beginning to play out; it will be a marathon not a sprint, so while we have started well, we need to maintain our form.

The times ahead are likely to bring serious challenges:

• How will we keep those temporarily housed, housed permanently and with the ongoing support many require?

• How will we cope with expected falls in property prices when we carry so much household debt?

• How will people on Jobseeker cope if they return to the penury of newstart?

• Can we maintain an eviction holiday while too many have lower or no income?

The role social housing and affordable housing play will be more important as the crisis evolves and the fallouts mount up. Our sector is critical in dealing with the human fallout from normal structural failure, the failure of relying on markets to address housing for low incomes, the failure of systems like education, child protection, corrections, employment etc. which all contribute to poor housing and homelessness, so our importance is even greater with COVID-19.

This crisis is likely to require growth in our sectors and hopefully, it presents an opportunity to reset a national discourse around the role of housing as a supporter and incubator of human lives, family, opportunity and participation. We need to grasp this chance to ensure that the future of our sector is recast around the role of housing - first, backed by support services recast to people instead of outdated systems.

National Shelter is committed to pursuing those changes and will itself need to be supported by the sector to do so. Challenging times challenge us all to rethink normal.