Victorians, including those in Hume and Whittlesea, are in desperate need of social housing with waiting lists longer than the national average.
A new report by the Productivity Commission shows an average wait time of 17 months for 50 per cent of the greatest need households in Victoria. The national average is six months.
Council to Homeless Persons chief executive Jenny Smith said the state’s housing crisis is “completely out of control”.
“The people in greatest need of social dwellings [are] waiting almost three times longer than the national average in some cases,” she said.
“The massive blowout in wait times shows the incredible human cost of the state’s massive social housing shortfall.”
The report also shows an increasing proportion of people accessing homelessness services are employed.
Ms Smith inflation was fueling the housing crisis.
“Rampant inflation is fuelling an increase in Victoria’s working poor being pushed into homelessness,” she said.
“Almost one in five Victorian’s accessing specialist homelessness services in the last financial year had a job.”
Ms Smith said it’s critical the government continues to invest in social housing to guarantee 6000 new homes are built each year for at least the next decade.
“This report should be sounding alarm bells for the Victorian Government,” she said.
“The solutions are in reach, we just desperately need the political will to match the scale of our deepening housing crisis.”
The report showed there was a 5.5 percentage point increase for Indigenous people who had a job accessing specialist homelessness services in 2021/22 – 14.6 per cent had a job when accessing homeless services in 2021/22 up from 9.1 per cent in 2017/18.
“This report also sadly shows the shocking disparity Indigenous people face in housing outcomes,” Ms Smith said.
“We need specific and targeted measures like increased funding for Aboriginal community-controlled housing organisations.”
