MORE than a quarter of vulnerable households who joined the public housing queue since September were from Brimbank and the north-west, new figures show.
Across Victoria the waiting list climbed by 685 households, but 191 of them were in the Brimbank, Melton, Wyndham and Hume areas.
Department of Human Services data reveals an increase of 5.1 per cent at the Sunshine housing office in December, taking the area’s waiting list to 3903.
Opposition housing spokesman Richard Wynne said the figures revealed the state government’s failure to bankroll fresh public housing stock since 2010. “Housing Minister Wendy Lovell has shifted the deckchairs for two years, but, without investing in public housing, waiting lists were always going to grow,” he said.
Ms Lovell attributed the increase to changes to single-parenting payments. Under changes announced in the federal budget, all single, unemployed parents are put on the lower-paying Newstart allowance of $508 a fortnight when their youngest turns eight.
“It’s possible that part of the increase in the waiting list is due to these single parents reassessing their situation and applying for public housing,” Ms Lovell said.
This claim was criticised as a bid to shift blame, given the welfare changes took hold after the reporting period used for the figures.
After waiting five years for a home, Keilor resident Ellie, who didn’t want her last name printed, fled a public housing unit in the eastern suburbs when her partner became violent.
Ellie, 37, is now a single mother to a five-year-old son and was forced to seek refuge with a relative in the western suburbs after being told by welfare agencies that she wouldn’t be eligible for another house for at least eight years. “I was desperate to escape the relationship I was in and by leaving the home I was living in, I had shut myself out of the housing sector again,” she said.
“Because I wasn’t what they classified as completely homeless and I had somewhere to stay for a while, they told me I wasn’t on the urgent housing list and it would be years before I would be considered.” Inspired by her own experience of poverty, she’s now studying community services at Victoria University. It will be seven years before Ellie completes the part-time course, but she says that for single mothers like herself there is no other way.
“I never would have been offered private rental without working part-time. Some people are more vulnerable; they have mental health issues and no family. There are so many gaps in the system for struggling families.”
A DHS spokeswoman said each public housing case was treated on an individual basis. She said those in greatest need were always housed first.
