Gold Coast homelessness: State government to deliver 392 new social housing homes by 2022, costing $110m, to address crisis
An ambitious plan to fix one of the Gold Coast’s biggest issues has been unveiled - as frontline services reveal the true toll. READ THE FULL REPORT
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THE state government plans to deliver 392 new social housing homes on the Gold Coast by 2022, costing $110 million, to help address the city’s growing homelessness problem.
Minister for Communities and Housing Leeanne Enoch said 97 houses were already complete and contracts had been awarded to build another 233.
“As part of the 233 new homes, 44 are being delivered through registered housing providers through the department’s partnering for growth initiative, and a further 34 new social housing homes are forecast to have contracts awarded by June 2021,” she said.
“It’s important that victims of domestic violence can access safe and secure accommodation where they can receive support.”
The Bulletin this week reported that Gold Coast car parks were being considered “viable options” for housing women and children fleeing domestic violence situations.
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Domestic Violence Prevention Centre chief executive Rosemary O’Malley said the city’s vacancy rate was 0.6 per cent, and that the 16 services working on an integrated response to domestic violence considered homelessness the city’s biggest issue.
In 2020, the prevention centre helped 6500 women, 80 per cent of whom did not have stable accommodation.
Ms Enoch said that this financial year $8.75m had been allocated for seven specialist homelessness services in the Gold Coast local government area to provide temporary accommodation and other support services to the homeless or those at risk of homelessness.
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“A new domestic and family violence shelter was delivered on the Gold Coast in 2020 and another replacement shelter is on track for delivery in the coming months. These will increase the total number of government-funded shelters in the state to more than 50.”
Ms Enoch said that as of February 28, the Gold Coast Housing Service Centre had provided 850 bond loans and 356 rentals grants to help people secure a rental home in the region.
However, Southport MP Rob Molhoek said the government could “spin it whatever way they like it, it doesn’t change the fact that there has been a net decrease in capital expenditure into public housing on a per annum basis since Labor came to office”.
“They cut the LNP’s Logan and Gold Coast Revitalisation projects as soon as they came to power, which would have seen significantly more public housing places by now, in mixed developments across the region,” he said.
Last week Mr Molhoek hosted a group of Gold Coast housing providers in Brisbane. They toured Common Ground and some Brisbane Housing Company social and affordable housing sites.
He said research and evaluation on some of the models showed it was “far more economical” to get housing right first, with tenants in supported living environments experiencing less mental health episodes, fewer hospital presentations and visits to emergency departments and less police intervention.
“It stands to reason that we need to build much more public housing and crisis accommodation on the Gold Coast to deal with a waiting list that is quite simply out of control,” he said.
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CAR Parks are being considered “viable options” to house Gold Coast women and children fleeing domestic violence situations as the city trends towards being the nation’s top hot spot for homelessness.
Domestic Violence Prevention Centre chief executive Rosemary O’Malley said the Gold Coast had never seen migration like it was seeing post COVID.
“The vacancy rate on the Gold Coast is 0.6 per cent, there’s very few vacancies, let alone for anyone escaping domestic violence,” she said.
“We have an integrated response to domestic violence, we have 16 services here government and non-government, and across all of those services homelessness is the number one issue.
“So much so that we had to form a separate working party from that integrated response to actually start thinking about what we’re going to do collectively to try and respond.
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“And we’re looking at, as viable options now, car parks for women and children and that’s just ridiculous as one of the wealthiest countries of the world.”
Ms O’Malley said in 2020 her service helped 6500 women, with 80 per cent of those not having stable accommodation.
St John’s Crisis Centre manager Dianne Kozik said she was told by Department of Social Services staffer that the Gold Coast was currently “trending” as the nation’s top spot for homelessness and domestic violence.
“It’s sad but it’s true unfortunately, we are seeing at least three to four people presenting at our services every week alone because they have left a domestic violence situation,” she said.
“It’s not a nice thing to think about, but we’ve definitely seen an increase of people using our service and a rise in the number of people living in their cars because they can’t find accommodation.”
Mrs Kozik said hospitals were having to discharge people into homelessness because there was nowhere for them to go.
“It’s terrible, even the Department of Housing and Public Works say they don’t have any properties left because they have been inundated with requests for accommodation recently,” she said.
“Rent has gone up astronomically and every time you ring up, it’s taken with people offering to pay six months in advance, and most of these are people from down south.
“So where are locals supposed to live?”
Susie Longman, the founder of 2000 Hearts, said local emergency food providers such as Agape Outreach were struggling to meet demand, and she recently made a late-night mercy dash to help a family.
“This poor mum had just moved out from her husband, had the strength to leave a domestic violence situation, and she didn’t have a dollar to her,” she said.
“She had no food for the kids, no petrol in the car, so where do you go from there? I took over some bags of groceries and gave her a fuel card. People are really doing it tough.”
Meanwhile, Gold Coast Senator Murray Watt said that about 151 women and children fleeing violence in the city were turned away from crisis accommodation each year because of the Morrison Government’s failure to properly fund emergency accommodation.
“The Safe Places program committed just $60 million in funding for capital works over the next two years,” Senator Watt said.
“Out of 133 applications across Australia, just 40 received funding. Not a single dollar from the program was committed to the Gold Coast.”
Shadow Assistant Minister for Communities and the Prevention of Family Violence, Senator Jenny McAllister, said family and domestic violence was the leading cause of homelessness for women.
“Some organisations rent motel rooms for the women and children they can’t accommodate, but this is only if they can afford to do so. For many women and children, the outcome is homelessness – couch surfing, sleeping in the car, or on the street,” she said.
“No one should be left without the support they need to flee domestic violence.”
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LANDLORDS are not renewing leases for low-income families in the Tweed region because they can rent out their properties at twice the price to cashed-up people from southern states.
Have A Friend founder John Lee said there was a “major” problem with a rise in the number of homeless people in the Tweed Heads area because of the influx of people from Melbourne and Sydney.
“Just a couple of weeks ago a lady who had been in her place for nearly 20 years, paying $250 a week, had to move out because the owner can get $600 for it now,” he said.
“A mother with three kids also had to move out of her place for the same reason. Landlords just don’t care, they are just thinking of all the money that they can get.
“Then when a unit does come up for rent, there’s 30 to 40 people going for it, with people offering a year’s rent in advance that those living on the breadline simply don’t have.”
Meanwhile, Gold Coast City Council’s lifestyle and community committee chairman Cr Hermann Vorster said homelessness was a challenge for all divisional councillors.
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He said Mayor Tom Tate had written to the state government asking for clarity on what social housing was available on the Gold Coast and how the city compared to other local government areas with its capacity.
He also wants transparency in regards to what’s in the pipeline for social housing investment.
“The government appears to be exempting itself from the council approval process for social housing,” Cr Vorster said. “These projects are popping up without consultation. The first we know about them is when a development noticeboard goes up or residents contact us.”
Cr Vorster said elected councillors, at the coalface of their respective communities, were the ideal people to know where best to build public housing on the Gold Coast and should be consulted.
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