Toowoomba social organisations campaign for more social housing to help vulnerable

Social organisations across Toowoomba have revealed the reasons behind the city’s desperate need for public housing, with one activist describing it as a “catastrophe”.

Toowoomba needs more than 600 new social housing dwellings to support the thousands of people struggling to put a roof over their head.

That’s according to two of the region’s top social service organisations, which have joined a new campaign by the Queensland Council of Social Service, pushing for the State Government to invest billions into public housing.

The campaign, called the Town of Nowhere, has called on the State Government to spend $136m into social housing in Toowoomba, which would create thousands of new jobs.

Lifeline Darling Downs CEO Derek Tuffield said thousands of people including families and young children were currently in crisis accommodation or some sort of temporary living situation.

“It’s constant at the moment, and finding affordable low-cost accommodation is very scarce,” he said.

“With winter coming on, when you’ve got families of children and you’re homeless, the critical thing is to provide adequate shelter.

“All governments have got budgets, but the issue is it’s a bit of catch-up. For a number of years, the need for social housing has not kept pace with demand.”

Vinnies Toowoomba Homeless Hostel co-ordinator Flora Nussey said the impacts of COVID-19 and migration from residents in NSW and Victoria had only made the situation worse.

“The support we provide for men and families in Toowoomba is supposed to be just for short-term crisis accommodation,” she said. 

“We’ve had families housed in our crisis accommodation for more than 12 months – they can’t leave because there is simply nowhere to go that is affordable,” she said.

QCOSS CEO Aimee McVeigh said the current response was not addressing the demand.

“There are 2,286 people in Toowoomba right now who don’t have a safe place to sleep tonight,” she said.

“They cannot afford their rent, they are sleeping in their car, or on a friend’s couch.

“For too long, we’ve been using emergency sandbags against what is a tsunami of need.

“Investment at its current pace is simply not meeting demand.”

Toowoomba social activist Alyce Nelligan, who has struggled to find social housing in the past, said the State and Federal Governments needed to address the issue.

“Prior to the reduction in Jobseeker there was already 1660 people on the waiting list for social housing, and thousands more one mortgage payment away from default,” she said.

“Charities are reporting that has risen in the last couple of months — it’s a catastrophe.

“I applied for an accessible social home five years ago and was told simply it would be year before a suitable property could be found.”

In response to the campaign, a spokesman for the Department of Communities, Housing and Digital Economy said the government was already investing millions into public housing.

“Through the $1.6 billion Housing Construction Jobs program, the largest investment in social housing since World War Two, the Queensland Government has committed $24 million to deliver 58 new social homes in the Toowoomba region by June 2022,” they said.