Renting or owning a home in Australia has become more expensive over recent decades.
But in the United States and United Kingdom, an affordable housing model is helping families and individuals into secure, long-term housing they can afford.
In Australia, community land trusts are only beginning to emerge, but there’s growing interest and research.
It’s not an obvious solution to homelessness – but crowdfunded job training is helping many move from hostel to home.
For Christianah, 2020 offers the potential of a better life for her and her two-year-old daughter; one of financial stability without the threat of eviction hanging over them. Christianah, a 31-year-old former care home worker has just enrolled on a course that by the end of the year will see her qualify as a dental nurse, double her salary and open the way for more lucrative opportunities. “I am so excited to be training for a career that could finally allow me to earn enough to pay off my debts and give me and my daughter a more stable future,” she says.
Josie Douglas sits on a verandah overlooking a ridge of red rocks and earth, scrubby with saltbush and spinifex near the centre of Alice Springs. It’s late afternoon and only 31C – a reprieve from a run of days in the high 30s and 40s.
But Douglas knows that from now on it will only get hotter.
Last summer was the hottest on record, and the driest in 27 years in central Australia. Five per cent of the town’s street trees died. A heat monitoring study showed that on some unshaded streets the surface temperature was between 61C and 68C.
“Central Australian Aboriginal people are very resilient. They have evolved to cope with the harsh and variable desert climate, but there are limits.
“Without action to stop climate change, people will be forced to leave their country and leave behind much of what makes them Aboriginal. Climate change is a clear and present threat to the survival of our people and their culture.”
Hundreds of public housing dwellings in the inner suburbs of a major Australian city have been sold to make way for slick new apartments, which the government defends by building new dwellings for the needy at the city’s margins.
No, it’s not the New South Wales Liberal-National government’s sale of public housing at Sydney’s Millers Point, this is happening in Canberra under the Labor-Greens government led by Andrew Barr.
New figures released under freedom of information show there are now 397 fewer public housing dwellings in Braddon than in 2014, with further big reductions along the Northbourne light rail corridor in Turner (123), the inner south in Griffith (150) and Red Hill (146).
Although increases were recorded in Coombs (152), Moncrieff (143) and Gungahlin (100), the Australian Capital Territory had about 200 fewer public housing units in June 2019 than in 2014. Budget papers confirm that a target for public housing stock of 11,809 was missed, with just 11,700 at the end of 2018-19.
Homelessness charity Dignity is housing those under 24 with people over 55 in an effort to break down barriers and encourage a sense of community.
The artists Gilbert & George have said they are risking their reputation “as horrid people” with a philanthropic initiative to sell crockery glazed with their own works to raise money to feed the homeless.
The collaborative duo have been shunned by what they describe as “intolerant liberals” for their Conservative-supporting pro-Brexit politics but claim they are “the artists of the disenfranchised”. Now they have provided artworks to be transferred on to dinner plates that will be sold by a social enterprise near their home in the East End of London for £125.
The plates feature images of works from their latest exhibition, Paradisical Pictures, which has been touring globally and is currently showing in Los Angeles, where they visited the Skid Row homeless enclave. One of the works, On the Bench, shows the pair slumped on a bench in a cemetery, apparently asleep or passed out.
“We are the tramps,” said Gilbert Prousch, 76. “Waiting for Godot.”
ACoSS survey finds financial counselling, legal services and homelessness sectors particularly stretched, with those in rural areas under most pressure.
Just 5% of staff working in community services say they have enough capacity to meet demand, a survey commissioned by the Australian Council of Social Service (Acoss) has found.
The survey of 1,464 staff including 406 organisational leaders, conducted in October this year found very few had the ability to completely meet the demand for services from the community.
Those most likely to report unmet demand were in the housing and homelessness (38%) sector, financial counselling (35%) and legal services (33%). Those located in regional and rural areas had higher levels of unmet demand.
Just 5% of respondents said they were completely able to meet demand, while 41% said they were somewhat able to meet demand. Almost one-quarter of respondents said they were rarely or never able to meet demand.
Women were the biggest users of homelessness services in 2018-19 as they fled domestic and family violence situations.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data released on Wednesday showed 60 per cent of homelessness service users nationally were women.
Data showed in every state and territory, bar Tasmania and the ACT, domestic and family violence was the biggest cause.
But in Tasmania and the ACT, housing affordability was the biggest reason.
For men, the biggest reason nationally was housing affordability or financial difficulties.
The bed is difficult to get onto and has barely enough space to squeeze around. The bathroom door doesn’t shut, and gets in the way when you reach for the toilet roll dispenser.
This may sound like a pretty typical TripAdvisor review.
But if you stay in the hotel bedroom created by Christopher Samuel, don’t rush to post a scathing review. He has actually designed it to be as annoying as possible (while remaining just about habitable).
“You probably wouldn’t spend more than a night in it in reality,” says Michael Trainor, creative director of the Art B&B in Blackpool. “I think the novelty would soon wear off.”
Samuel is one of 19 artists who have kitted out a room in the seaside B&B. And it’s hard not to chuckle at the fiendishness of Samuel’s adaptations every time you spot another deliberately awkward feature (the upside-down shower gel dispenser is a particular triumph of user-unfriendliness).
But for him, it’s not a joke.
A private member’s bill, moved by Labor MP Josh Burns, recently called on the Australian government “to help build more affordable homes” in response to the growing homelessness crisis. A premise of the bill is that a lack of social housing is a major cause of homelessness and increasing the supply is a key element of solving the problem. The government’s response was that one solution is to encourage social housing tenants to find paid work, so they can move into private rental housing.
The problem with this argument is it overlooks the major barriers to entering the private rental market for low-income households. It also does not excuse the failure to invest adequately in building more social housing.