MEDIA RELESE: NSW needs an extra 12,500 social and affordable homes a year

One in three new social and affordable rental homes Australian needs will need to be in NSW, a new study released ahead of today’s Everybody’s Home Affordable Housing Conference shows.

The analysis predicts NSW will need an additional 12,500 new social and affordable rental homes a year until 2026 to meet the current backlog and keep pace with the state’s expected population growth.

It includes 5,000 social housing homes a year until 2026 for low-income households and 7,500 affordable (below market) rental homes for people in rental stress

CHIA NSW CEO, Wendy Hayhurst said this amount of additional social housing would return the proportion of social housing to 6% of all NSW housing – the same levels as 20 years ago.

The affordable rental numbers are based on providing enough homes for lower income households not eligible for social housing but paying more than 30% of their income on rent – which would result in 2.5 % of housing properties being affordable rental housing.

“To put that into perspective, England expects 40% of its new housing will be affordable housing and New York is working towards 30% of all new housing being affordable housing by 2026,” Ms Hayhurst said.

“Of course this doesn’t take into account the housing needs of many key workers who earn a moderate/ decent wage so aren’t eligible for affordable housing but still struggle to find anywhere to rent near where they work.

“It means that people are moving further away to find cheaper housing and spend too many hours travelling back and forth to work, which will not boost the state’s economic productivity.”

In NSW, 240,000 renters – or 8.5% of households are classified as under rental stress.

More than 55,000 households are waiting are waiting for social housing, the state’s homelessness rate has grown three times faster than the national average.

Homelessness NSW CEO, Katherine McKernan said a chronic lack of housing is the biggest cause of homelessness.

“Homelessness in NSW increased by 37% between 2011 and 2016, this was driven by scarcity of social housing and a lack of affordable rentals,” Ms McKernan said.

“The additional funding of $61 million provided in the NSW Budget for homelessness is welcome, however, it isn’t focused in the right area – we need significant investment in social housing and housing first to really fix homelessness in NSW”

The CHIA NSW projections are at http://communityhousing.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/1806-CHIA-Judy-Yates-research-report.pdf

 

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