There has been a 37 per cent increase of older people using homelessness services since 2013, according to new research that has prompted calls for a boost to social housing investment.
A report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) said 24,094 people over 55 needed homelessness services in 2018, with 11,963 people seeking support in Victoria alone.
A new affordable housing high-rise development in Woolloongabba has been recommended for approval by Brisbane City Council.
The development, put forward by not-for-profit Brisbane Housing Company, will add 32 affordable units to the inner city’s housing stock.
The Stirling prize-winning Norwich estate is the tip of the iceberg: despite government cuts, local authorities are finding innovative ways to build housing.
A crescent of semi-detached houses stands on the edge of a playing field in Conisbrough, South Yorkshire, offering views of the rolling hills beyond. With pointed gables, big picture windows and generous back gardens dotted with trampolines, it looks like a development of aspirational “executive homes”, awaiting its gilded electric gates and four-wheel-drives.
“We had people coming along trying to buy them when the hoardings came down,” says Charlotte Johnson, housing manager at Doncaster Council. They had to turn the crowds away – because these are council houses, some of the first built here for a generation. It is just one example of what many local authorities are now managing to achieve up and down the country, against the odds, after decades of central government inaction. Last week, the award for the best new building in the UK went to Goldsmith Street in Norwich, another exemplary development of council homes, marking the first time the hallowed RIBA Stirling prize has been given to social housing. The award sends a powerful message: despite government cuts, a number of bold councils are getting on and doing it for themselves.
If we built the houses we needed, the anxieties and fears that motivated the Brexit vote would at last recede.
Over the past three years, commentary about the nervous, uncertain condition of Britain has repeatedly veered into questions of “belonging” and community. These things tend to be framed in terms of culture: conversations about whether liberals and leftwingers can speak to people attached to nation and place, angst about flags, understandable fears about the point at which such things blur into nastiness and bigotry. In the process, one crucial point is rather missed. If you are going to talk about whether people feel rooted, and the absolute basics of community, there is one subject that ought to command your attention: that of the basic, primal idea of home, and the fact that far too many people in this country either do not have one, or worry that the one they possess might be about to get snatched away.