TRANSCRIPT:
"This is somebody at probably your deepest point, your darkest point, reaching out for help. And that no one answers the call, and that call goes unanswered would be a pretty harrowing feeling of hopelessness of, well, where do I go to now? If these are the people that are meant to be there to help me and they can't answer my call, where do I go now?"
This is Angela Jackson, the principal of Impact Economics and the author of a new report that lays bare the extent of the homelessness crisis - and how tough services are finding it to help - or even answer the phone.
The report surveyed 23 homelessness services over a period of two weeks, finding there were 200 hours during that time when services had to close their doors, as well as 325 hours of unanswered calls, and over 660 [[666]] urgent emails staff could not reply to.
Anglicare Victoria CEO Paul McDonald says it comes down to a growing disparity between supply and demand.
"The surge in demand, I'd have to say, is just relentless in the sense of the numbers of and ranges of different people. Demand versus supply is like looking at a seesaw where the weight is heavily down one end. We're seeing a new demographic of the young adult seeking housing or not being able to get into the housing rental market, women and their children, victims of family violence unable to move easily into housing options for them."
This surge in demand has meant that families with children seeking emergency accommodation couldn't be provided with help about one in every five days, while people without kids were turned away every one in two days.
Unaccompanied minors were turned away one in every nine days.
For the people who make it through the doors of support services, Angela Jackson says support workers are faced with impossible choices as they decide who to help.
"There isn't enough long-term housing for them to go into. So they're staying in services for longer, which means there's less emergency accommodation available. And so the sort of calls they're making are, and we heard this from providers, is, 'oh, well you've got children, but oh, you've got a car. Well, sorry, you can sleep in the car then, because our first priority is people with kids with no car'. It's pretty difficult to defend for Australia, as wealthy as we are, that people are in that situation where homelessness services are having to triage between families with and without cars."
The report says a key reason for the increase in homelessness is rental stress.
The number of people at risk of homelessness has increased across the country by 63 per cent to three million people, driven by rental vacancies falling dramatically and a surge in prices, with not enough affordable options for everyone.
Homelessness Australia CEO Kate Colvin says it only takes one change in circumstances to push people over the edge.
"An actual incident that triggers homelessness, and that's the negative shock - like losing some income, like losing your job or experiencing family violence and having to leave the home that you're in."
Rent assistance and an increased supply of social and affordable housing are well-documented solutions to the housing crisis, as suggested by the report.
But Ms Colvin says the government could do a lot more to reduce these rental pressures.
"The real fact problem in the rental market is there's just not enough low cost rentals that are available. And so that creates two problems. One is it creates really intense competition for the few rental properties that are low cost that are out there, which pushes up their price, but it also means people miss out. And there's also the fact that rents keep increasing. So what we need is the most important solution is government putting more low cost rentals into the market by investing in social housing."
The homelessness report comes as the federal government is making another attempt to get its long-stalled housing policy through parliament in the final sitting fortnight of the year.
Labor has tried to legislate an equity scheme that would allow first homebuyers to put down a smaller deposit.
The government has also tried to put in place a build-to-rent scheme under which tax incentives would be offered to developers to construct properties to be leased out.
Angela Jackson says these measures could take time to implement - and in the meantime, frontline services need more funding to look after people who cannot wait.
"We see that the funding of specialist homelessness services been withdrawn in recent times in that sort of post pandemic period. The social housing build is important, but it is in many cases just replacing existing stock rather than building new stock. And so certainly what we're seeing in Victoria is there is going to be an ongoing need and demand for public housing alongside ensuring that the homelessness supports remains sufficient to support people who are both at risk of homelessness and also experiencing homelessness."
