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As the government struggles to attract support for its housing policies ahead of a cost-of-living election, homelessness services are left without essential funding. By Karen Barlow.
Exclusive: Labor is letting housing charities fail
The futures of Homelessness Australia and the Whitlam-era National Shelter are becoming more uncertain in a Coalition-era funding squeeze that, to the surprise of advocates, continues under Labor.
The peak bodies say they received assurances from Labor in opposition and have now made “multiple approaches” for funding of between $500,000 and $1.2 million a year to the minister for housing and homelessness, Julie Collins, as well as Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth, Treasurer Jim Chalmers and the Prime Minister’s Office.
“What has come back to us is that the government is funding housing. They’re not looking to fund organisations, even though the ask that we have is really quite small compared to the funding that exists for housing more broadly, which is $32 billion,” National Shelter chief executive Emma Greenhalgh says.
“Whereas our funding ask is really quite minuscule.”
These advocacy groups see the housing and homelessness problem in Australia as being in “deep crisis” and worsening. Kate Colvin, the chief executive of Homelessness Australia, says the situation “is far worse than it was 10 years ago”. She says many more people are being squeezed out of the private rental market and needing social housing that simply isn’t there.
“There’s a lot more people needing to access services at the same time that homeless services need to rehouse people, but rehousing people is harder.”
This makes it easier to underestimate the scale of the problem, Colvin says, as homeless people who can’t get through the door to a homelessness service are not counted. Many in need are simply “doubling up, couch-surfing”.
“There’s more people on the street, but there’s a lot more people who are homeless who are not on the street.”
In addition to their welfare role, the peak bodies conduct research and unmatched data collection, sometimes at the behest of government departments. National Shelter produces an authoritative Rental Affordability Index, with SGS Economics and Planning, on a pro bono basis to track rental affordability.
The unique housing stress indicator has revealed, over the past decade, increasing hardship for people on JobSeeker.
The housing advocacy groups have led a fraught existence since the Howard years, and funding for Homelessness Australia and National Shelter was pulled altogether three days before Christmas in 2014. The Abbott government, just before Scott Morrison stepped in as social services minister, used a reshuffling of community services grants to end federal funding for a swath of providers.
“They just weren’t interested in social housing and certainly not interested in peak bodies, and certainly not interested in progressive peak bodies like National Shelter,” says Adrian Pisarski, who was chief executive of National Shelter between 2014 and 2022.
“We’ve been instrumental in creating lots of programs and ideas ... which have helped various governments out over time. Principally Labor governments, because they’re the ones who are interested in the issue. The LNP governments tend to ignore this area completely.”
The housing bodies struggled on. Between 2015 and 2022, Homelessness Australia was a voluntary operation without staff. National Shelter, which aims to assist people on low incomes, has been surviving on memberships, sponsorships and grants.
In 2021, the Morrison government ended a funding supplement for homelessness services under an equal remuneration order deal made by the Fair Work Commission.
There were hopes, even expectations, that Labor would restore funding.
“We were given assurances that funding would be forthcoming,” Pisarski says.
“It was an expectation, and not just as National Shelter but Homelessness Australia and CHIA [Community Housing Industry Association] in particular, that funding for peak bodies in the housing area would be something that Labor would do.”
On the campaign trail, Anthony Albanese had often emphasised his personal experience growing up in public housing. The new minister for housing and homelessness has a similar background. Yet when Julie Collins became minister, Pisarski says, the earlier assurances were not acted upon. “All of that evaporated.”
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie says the government can afford to do more.
“I don’t doubt that the prime minister and the treasurer and Julie Collins … really want to address the housing crisis. I don’t call their character into question. But what I call into question is their priorities.
“When you look at the recent federal budget, it’s a wafer-thin surplus. And if they didn’t have numerous little decisions, like not funding Shelter, that wafer-thin surplus disappears.”
Independent Senator David Pocock, who represents the jurisdiction with Australia’s highest rate of persistent homelessness, wants the funding restored.
“That’s the reason I’m so annoyed about this, is that they are good-faith actors,” the ACT senator says of the peak bodies.
“Genuinely. They’re not there to grandstand and they get their hands dirty and really do the work … I found them to be really useful resources.”
Homelessness Australia is surviving on a bequest made five years ago, which Colvin says will run out in a year or two. Things are far tighter for National Shelter.
“We will have to really look at what form we take at the start of next year,” Greenhalgh says.
A letter to Collins, dated May 28, warns the body will “prepare to begin winding-up operations altogether from January 2025, otherwise the organisation may risk operating while insolvent”.
In her response, dated June 19, the housing minister wrote that she understood the disappointment that National Shelter was not funded in the May budget, and that “the Albanese government is directing its available funding to implement its housing and homelessness initiatives, and for financial support to states and territories to ensure more Australians have a safe and affordable place to call home”.
The letter then runs through the government’s housing initiatives before advising that Greenhalgh ask the Department of Social Services to look into whether there are any current open grant processes for a possible funding avenue.
Noting the department had no such process at the time, the minister wrote, “You may wish to register at www.grants.gov.au to be advised of future grant opportunities across the government.”
In response to questions from The Saturday Paper about the funding future for the two peak housing bodies, the housing minister acknowledged their work and advocacy but insisted the government was concentrating on providing financial support to deliver housing and homelessness services.
“The Albanese Labor government is delivering the most significant housing reforms in a generation after a decade of little action,” Collins said in a statement.
“The government is ensuring that our approaches to increasing the supply of homes is informed by independent advice from leading housing experts, which is why we created the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council.
“The government consults broadly on housing and homelessness policy, including directly with those on the frontline of our country’s housing challenges.”
The peak bodies say much of what they do is behind the scenes, but their focus is pushing for an effective and bold 10-year national housing and homelessness plan, which is in the works. Homelessness Australia has published three papers on the plan.
“We’ve been actually told that we are a constructive peak by people in this government,” says Greenhalgh. “So I don’t feel that it is about not wanting to hear, and I would hate to think that’s the case. Because any criticism that we might have, I think we’ve been fairly tempered in that.”
They see themselves as a bridge between the government and the frontline of the housing crisis.
There’s a generational divide to this issue, with a whole cohort of younger voters locked out of home ownership and struggling with extreme rental stress.
In an election likely to be fought primarily on the cost of living, Labor, the Greens and the Coalition all see value in staking very different policy positions on housing, as a key issue.
“I know that in my part of the world, in Tasmania, there genuinely, genuinely is a housing crisis. It’s part and parcel of the cost-of-living crisis. And it will be one of the top reasons for people deciding who to vote for,” Wilkie says.
The strain was showing this week as the government released its latest pitch to boost housing supply. Late on Thursday the prime minister pledged to unlock $1 billion under the Priority Works Stream of the Housing Support Program to pay for enabling infrastructure and amenities needed as new homes are built.
The money would go collectively to the states and territories to build roads, sewers, energy, water and community infrastructure. The government says the money will also pay for new social housing.
Housing Minister Julie Collins is boxed in by the Greens and the Coalition as she seeks Senate support to pass the Help to Buy shared equity scheme, which is designed to open the door of home ownership, with up to 40,000 places. The unlikely alliance emerged again this week with these opposing parties’ votes forcing a split in a government bill that had reforms to the “buy now, pay later” industry tied to a Build to Rent proposal – tax changes that would encourage foreign investors to build and operate large apartment complexes for renters. Both have been sent separately to a committee for scrutiny.
“They should be ashamed of themselves in the Greens political party,” Collins told parliament on Thursday. “They say they care about housing and homelessness, yet they keep teaming up with the obstructionist Liberals in the Senate, playing games with people’s lives.”
The opposition’s housing policy is centred on a proposal to allow people to use their superannuation to pay for a home.
For their part, the Greens are buoyed by the $3 billion in government concessions they secured last year when they stalled Labor’s $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund in the Senate, raising speculation about a double dissolution.
The Greens want rent freezes, negative gearing limits, changes to capital gains tax discounts, and many more billions pumped into the sector. Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather likes to reiterate, whenever possible, that Albanese is a “wealthy property investor” and says Build to Rent is about giving “tax handouts to property developers to build apartments almost no one will be able to afford, with no protections against unlimited rent increases”.
The peak housing groups, meanwhile, have endorsed a co-sponsored Pocock and Kylea Tink private member’s bill that seeks to position housing as a fundamental human right.
Non-government legislation very rarely progresses to become law but at its core it asks the government to take responsibility for turning the housing crisis around and to address the root causes.
“We legislate all sorts of things,” Pocock says. “We legislate climate targets. We work towards them.
“When it comes to housing, why do we just let governments just do their thing and then the next one comes in and either renames everything or gets rid of things and tells us how they’re going to do things better?”
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on June 29, 2024 as "Labor’s housing gap".
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