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General News

26 June, 2023

Social housing demand soars

There are 484 families or single people waiting for social housing in the Maryborough district, but only 227 properties available in the area, new data has revealed. Of the 484 applicants on the social housing waiting list who wanted to live in the...

By Sarah Mennie

Social housing demand soars - feature photo

There are 484 families or single people waiting for social housing in the Maryborough district, but only 227 properties available in the area, new data has revealed.

Of the 484 applicants on the social housing waiting list who wanted to live in the Maryborough area as of March 31, 314 had been deemed priority access applications, according to the data from Homes Victoria.

Victorian Public Tenants Association (VPTA) CEO Katelyn Butterrss explained that people on the priority list were either “experiencing, or at risk of experiencing homelessness, or it was not safe for them to live where they did at the moment”.

“People who are eligible for the priority section of the wait list are facing extreme insecurity and on the verge crisis,” she said.

“Many, many people are doing it really tough right now.

“We know that state-wide there are 67,985 total applications for any kind of social housing, that’s both public and community housing. That was as at the end of March 2023. That’s how many applications are on the waiting list, many of those are for entire households.

“The true number of Victorians that we estimate are waiting for a home is more than 100,000.”

According to Homes Victoria’s Victorian Housing Register, of the 314 priority access applications who had listed the Maryborough district as where they wanted to live, 194 requested a single-bedroom home.

Sixty-four applied for a two-bedroom home.

Thirty-eight of the 314 applications requested a three-bedroom property and 18 applied for a four-bedroom.

According to the Victorian Housing Register, the Maryborough district has a total of 227 social housing homes.

Of these, 87 are one bedroom, 38 are two-bedroom, there are 98 three-bedroom properties and fewer than five homes that have four bedrooms.

Member for Northern Victoria Wendy Lovell criticised the state government for its “failure to provide housing for some of the region’s most vulnerable families”.

“The state government like to brag about their big housing build, but last week the minister admitted in the Budget Estimates hearings that the Housing Big Build will only add around 8000 additional

Social Housing homes, which would leave almost 60,000 families languishing on Labor’s ever-growing waiting list,” Ms Lovell said.

The state government’s Big Housing Build will boost Victoria’s social housing supply by 10 percent at a cost of $5.3 billion.

“Across the Central Goldfields, more than $5 million has been invested under the Big Housing Build and other social housing programs, with nine new homes completed and construction of another 10 homes underway,” a Homes Victoria spokesperson said.

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